


Nothing Like a Little Deus Ex Machina

by ilcuoreardendo



Series: Deus Ex Universe [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angelic Grace, Angst, Castiel is Missing, Castiel is a Sweetheart, Destiel - Freeform, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grace Sharing, Humor, If You Squint - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Resurrection, Season 5 Fix-It fic, Sexual Humor, Slow Burn, balance, the angels have a mother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-02-10 03:59:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12903531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilcuoreardendo/pseuds/ilcuoreardendo
Summary: The angels are seeking the destruction of the world. God’s still out of the picture. And Gabriel’s dead. But Gabriel should’ve known that being dead wouldn’t be enough to keep him from ringside seats to the Apocalypse.Complete 4-14-18Something twisted inside Gabriel when Sam Winchester—standing over a pool of blood from a man he thought his surrogate father, dead by Sam's own hand—says “Please.” Not says. Breathes it out like a prayer, a benediction. A cry for absolution. Please bring his brother back.That twists something in him that hasn't been tweaked in centuries. No… Decades. Not since that ephemeral moment Gabriel had felt the world shudder as Lucifer's vessel—Sam Winchester—came into being. As that bright soul was entrusted into his care, beguiling him to go so far as to visit the child's nursery. He'd watched as Mary Winchester put her newborn down to sleep and then stole close to the crib when she'd left, leaning low over the edge, and finding a pair of warm, hazel eyes staring at him.It always comes back to those eyes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I came to the SPN party sometime in 2012. I've been writing this fic on and off since about 2013 (in between life things like grad school and cross country moves). 
> 
> It is complete, minus some tweaks and except for the epilogue. I'll be posting a chapter about every two weeks. (That gives me some additional time to re-read and make any last moment tweaks.)
> 
> This was beta read by my lovely and long-time friend. You can find her at her Tumblr - [Lady Glo](http://ladyglo.tumblr.com). Any still standing mistakes are on me. 
> 
> You can find a soundtrack for this fic on Youtube. [OST Nothing Like a Little Deus Ex Machina](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVrXShjczaxgoxJxgLP7k60aMLC6ReIUJ&disable_polymer=true)

                                                                      

* * *

 

_Will I ever see you again  
Will there be no one above me to put my faith in? _

– “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood,” Neko Case

  
In the moment before Lucifer kills him, turning Gabriel's own blade against him and driving it through his sternum, Gabriel's reaction is split between the two opposite and complementary personalities that make up his being.

The first, the Trickster, sneers in the back of his psyche, chortling softly. _I fucking told you so_. The words twist in his head as Lucifer twists the blade in his gut, his grace. _What did you think would happen, getting involved with Winchesters?_

The second personality, the archangel, he has gone without heeding for centuries. It’s hard and soft, dark and bright all at once. It is the seed of who he once was. And it narrates his life as it flashes fast before his eyes. 

From the moment he first blinked awake and aware and beheld the vastness of celestial space and the bright and swirling forms of his older brothers, to stealing away from Heaven before Michael could enlist him in casting Lucifer out. From the creation of Earth, and that first strange fish that would evolve into the creatures he'd come to have a soft spot for in his long life on their world, to following Lucifer around the edges of Heaven—even after Lucifer had begun to shrink away, to become the consummate antagonistic teenager—soaking up his brother's knowledge like a sponge, playing games and practicing tricks….

Gabriel laughs at himself then, even as he looks into his brother's eyes and sees no apology for what his brother has done, what he will do. 

_Had he really thought this trick would work on Lucifer?_

And maybe that’s what hurts the most.

Despite the fights that had left Heaven roiling like a monsoon. Despite the words spat like venom. Despite the war, despite Lucifer being thrown out of home. Despite Gabriel not forgiving Lucifer, he had never renounced him. Had never turned his back.

Some part of Gabriel had still loved his brother.

Some tender, delicate piece of himself that he'd hidden away, buried under thousands of years of living as a god. Buried under sex, food, drugs, and all the hedonistic trappings he could get his hands on. Tucked away inside harmless pranks and judgment and bloody retribution that was his by right, even as he twisted it into something his Father had never intended.

That infinitesimal part of him hadn't really thought Lucifer would do this.

So when the blade slides into him, when the pain comes and with it the sensation of falling, of hurtling toward a vast and strange unknown, Gabriel stares into Lucifer’s determined eyes. He listens to Lucifer's roughened voice— _You learned all your tricks from me, little brother_ —and in that moment, he realizes the brother he once knew no longer exists.

 

_**#          #          #** _

 

They're a few miles from the hotel, Dean driving like the Devil is literally on his heels (though Sam's fairly sure, even if he doesn't quite know why, that Lucifer's dismissed thought of catching them this evening), with Kali silent in the backseat, when Sam suddenly stiffens. Long legs bracing against the floorboard, body pulling taut, his hands scramble, find the edges of the seat bottom and the oh-shit handle reflexively. His eyes roll up in his head. He sees the blur of the highway, the lights of the dashboard and beyond it all, the room they've just run from, two figures standing toe-to-toe.

Dean glances at him, probably wondering if his brother is having a seizure. He's sure Dean's about to pull onto the side of the road, when the full-body spasm releases him and Sam sinks into his seat, breathing hard, one hand coming to his chest, over his heart.

“Sam? The fuck was that?”

Sam doesn't answer. He glances over his shoulder, finds Kali watching him. She stares, eyes intense, before shaking her head, mouth thinning. If Sam didn't know better, he might think that was grief on her face. In the blink of an eye she vanishes from the backseat.

“I hate when they do that,” Dean says, scowling at the rear-view before glancing Sam's way again. “You gonna live?”

“Yeah.” Sam breathes in, breathes out. “Yeah.” He rubs at his chest. His heart is just now slowing, blood quieting in his veins.

“You wanna tell me what the hell that was?”

Not really, Sam thinks. He watches the dark strip of the highway unfurl in front of them, the Impala's headlights cutting through the low blanket of fog that's rolling across the wet asphalt. After a moment, he breaks the quiet. “Gabriel's dead.”

“How do you know that?”

And there it is. There's the question Sam can't answer. Or doesn't want to. After all, how do you tell your brother you think you might share some kind of mind link with the Devil?

It began not long after his and Dean's short-lived separation came to an end. After Lucifer had appeared in his dreams, dressed in the form of his long-dead girlfriend. Maybe that was when Lucifer had done…whatever he must have done. Used his angelic mojo to pry open a bit of Sam's mind—whatever he could get to beyond the wards Castiel had carved into his ribs—and left behind a piece of himself, a filament that linked them together.

At first, Sam hadn't noticed that slight shift of his emotions. Feeling suddenly sad or, for a flicker of a moment, incalculably happy. He blamed it on the Apocalypse, the upheaval of his life.

Until the night he nearly went off the rails at the man who knocked into him at the Gas-N-Sip. He'd been feeling strangely annoyed, and not able to pinpoint why, all day. When the man had bumped into him from behind, sending the coffee Sam had been holding cascading across the floor, Sam had clenched his fists and bit down on his tongue to keep the inexplicable rage in check.

He'd never felt like that before.

No.

The only time he'd felt like that was the night he'd killed Lilith, the night he'd gone, as Chuck had put it, “full Vader.”

Then Lucifer had shown up in his dreams again, for no reason that Sam could see—other than to taunt him—and Sam had put two and two together. Lucifer's smug and smiling face as he spoke of plans coming to fruition, and the warmth of pleasure, of satisfaction uncurling in Sam's belly.

His already erratic sleep patterns became more so after that. But not sleeping didn't quell the sudden or strange flickers of emotion. It didn't stop the images in his head. 

“Sam? You awake?”

“Yeah. I—I don't know how I know, Dean.” I felt it, he amends silently, I saw it. When Lucifer slid the blade into Gabriel, Sam felt as if his own hand were delivering the death blow, as if it were his eyes Gabriel met in shock and surprise and pain. Felt as if it were his own heart lurching as he watched his brother die, mouth flooded with the sour tang of grief, of old promises broken, of words never said.

“Maybe it has something to do with that?” Dean nods his head toward Sam's lap and the _Casa Erotica_ DVD that had wedged itself between his thighs during his...episode.

“Maybe. Think there's something on it?”

“Gabriel wanted me to guard it with my life, so…”

“Yeah. Our luck, he's just really into porn.”

“We'll check it out, first stop.”

Dean gives the Impala more gas, flicks on the radio. Sam's grateful to let the conversation drop. His head hurts. Something in his chest feels hot and raw and he heaves a sigh, closes his eyes, leans his face against the cool, rain-slicked window and tries to ignore the world for a while.

**_#          #          #_ **

It's dark where Sam is. Darkness so thick, it's like something touching his face. He reaches up, fingers grasping clumsily at his forehead, his brows, his lashes. He brushes away blackness like a veil, reveals dim light and recently familiar rooms turned strange, bleak and abstract like an Escher painting, by his dreaming mind.

Lucifer stands in profile, his silhouette starkly outlined by the weak light from the window behind him. (Was there a window in that room? Sam can’t remember.) His head is bowed, his eyes are closed, his arms hang loose at his sides.

For a moment Sam thinks he's asleep, but then he catches the subtle movement of Lucifer's lips. A meditation or maybe a prayer.

“Prayers,” Lucifer says, his voice full of gravel and glass, “are like raindrops in the ocean.” He opens his eyes and doesn't look at Sam. He looks into the shadows that stir like smoke around his feet. “I used to pray, Sam. All the time. It was expected, demanded. Even when my Father had Michael cast me from our home, I prayed. For centuries. For millennia. Down in the Cage. I wore myself raw with it. I don't pray anymore, Sam.”

Lucifer takes a step back, then another, disturbing the shadow-smoke. The light from the window grows stronger.

“This,” Lucifer says, “is all prayer gets you.”

Darkness recedes like a tide, reveals Gabriel's crumpled form. His eyes are closed, spit and blood stain his lips sticky red; for a moment all Sam can think of is strawberry syrup. The center of his chest is a nightmare of blood and bone. An angel blade wouldn't cause damage like this, Sam knows. It must be Lucifer's affectation. But still, he can't look away from the wound, the wet gobbets of flesh, the splintered rib cage, the shining, dark curve of the heart beneath.

Lucifer says his name, repeats it like a mantra. He's whispering promises, assuring Sam this doesn't have to continue, that delaying the inevitable only makes things worse.

Sam closes his eyes, refuses to look at the angel, even when he feels fingers beneath his chin, a warm presence moving far too close.

A sudden air-horn blast of sound interrupts those whispers and Sam jolts as if struck, body tumbling forward, toward the shadows, toward Lucifer. Sam opens his eyes.

He wakes to Dean swearing under his breath, something about “assholes with broken signals,” as he pulls the Impala back into the lane, tires bumping over the rumble strip, and pushes it back up to interstate speeds.

Music pours softly from the radio. Dean had actually turned the volume down as Sam had fallen asleep. And the music itself is out of the ordinary, rolling acoustic guitar and a woman's ageless, timeless voice singing.

The song brings to mind a folk tale Sam had come across in college, in his comparative mythologies elective. It was the closest he'd gotten to hunting in those four years. 

He can't remember the details. Remembers only the trickery. The fox assuring the wolf that the fox controlled the tides of the ocean. Telling the wolf, it would be just fine for him to walk into the stormy surf and collect a fish. Of course, the tale ended with the naive wolf washed up on the shore, wet and stiff and a perfect meal for the hungry fox.

Put too much trust in something, too much faith, and it turns around and devours you.

Sam shakes his head, clears the sleep from his throat. “What's with the music?”

Dean jumps in his seat at Sam's voice, mutters something about scanning for relevant news stories, as he reaches for the dial, switches it to a local rock station. Sam recognizes the call letters. They're in Illinois. He's been asleep for a few hours.

Through the Impala's windows, he watches fields, wet and muddy with the exorbitant rainfall of the last few nights, roll past. Grass sways electric green beneath a sky that stretches too far and too achingly grey toward the horizon.

An hour down the road, they pull into a truck stop just outside Davenport. Dean heads inside, grabs extra-large coffees as Sam pulls out his laptop, considers the DVD Gabriel had slapped into Dean's hands before making his last stand. A busty blonde stares out at him from the garish gold-on-red cover, tits pushed up impressively behind an unbuttoned business blazer, bubblegum pink lips parted invitingly.

Sam shakes his head, snorting laughter at the ridiculousness of the cover or of what he's about to try, he isn't sure. He closes his eyes, reaches out with his mind—a variation on the push theme he'd had going when exorcising demons—looking for...what, exactly? Some magical SOS: “I'm trapped in a porno, send help?” Or maybe that cool, electric tingle of power, sharp and sweet like the air before a storm, that he's come to associate with Gabriel.

All of the angels—at least all of the ones Sam had met—had their...“flavors.” Cas is warm sunlight, wind and sweet melon; Lucifer, the heat of high summer, scorched grasses and something else, indecipherable. Sam hadn't known what he was sensing until after meeting the other two angels, until Gabriel had trapped them in television hell and Sam had felt that power play over his skin, caught the scent of storms and realized what it was he was sensing, but not before he'd been turned into a car. And that was an experience he'd rather push to the back of his mind.

“Still with me?” Dean says, holding a Styrofoam cup under Sam's nose.

“Yeah. I was just—yeah.” Sam takes the cup, hits _play_ on the laptop as Dean gives him that “well, here we go” look that he's been wearing more and more often lately.

On screen, the music swells and the video starts off pretty much like any other porn Sam has seen. He lets his fingers hover over the _stop_ button until the music shifts, the mood changing and Gabriel, all gallows humor and a horrible fake mustache, makes his appearance.

Despite all of the weirdness over the course of his life, if someone had told Sam that one day, he'd be standing in the parking lot of a truck stop, his brother next to him, the Apocalypse looming on the horizon, watching a porno featuring an archangel, Sam would have doused them with holy water, put silver to their skin and then checked them into the nearest mental hospital.

But at the moment, all he can do is glance from the video to Dean's face as they absorb what Gabriel tells them. The keys to Lucifer's Cage, re-imprisoning the Devil, stopping the Apocalypse. It's too good to be true.

“And if that sounds too good to be true,” Gabriel says, “wellll, that's ’cause it is. You gotta get the rings from the Horsemen, open the Cage, trick my bro back into it, and avoid Michael and the God Squad. Can't say I envy you boys.” He looks contemplative for a moment, eyes darting to the side. “'Cept for that still breathing part, I have to admit. Dean...”

Dean straightens, eyes narrowing.

“You were right. I was afraid to stand up to my brother. But not anymore. So this is me, standing up.” He winks at the camera. “And this is me, lying down.” The angel falls to the bed, the blonde woman pouncing on top of him, pulling his shirt tails from his pants, revealing a soft belly, the faintest dusting of gold hair.

The sound of a zipper pulling down is loud over the swelling music and Dean flicks the DVD off, startling Sam.

Dean shoots him an odd look. “You want, I can leave you and the laptop alone?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “You think this is doable? Putting the Devil back in the box?”

“We already got two rings, right?” Dean says. “Shouldn't be impossible to get the last two.” He picks up the laptop, heads for the driver's seat “Let's get back to Bobby's. We can hash it out there.”

Sam follows him into the car, thinking about Horsemen and rings, about iron bars.

He remembers Lucifer in his dream, the way he held himself, the soft assurance with which he spoke.

They might get the rings. Sam has no trouble imagining that; they've pulled off some pretty good minor miracles over the years. But getting Lucifer back in the Cage? Sam's pretty sure asking nicely isn't going to cut it.

But Dean's looking a little more alive as he pulls the Impala onto the interstate. His eyes are bright and he's got the radio turned way up.

So Sam doesn't mention it.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When you’ve been a pagan god for over 5,000 years, you get used to a little blood, a little pain. Preferably all of it mixed with a little sex._
> 
> _There’s no sex._
> 
>   _And Gabriel has never felt pain quite like this._
> 
> _“The rebirth is a painful process,” She says, sounding breathless. “I’m sorry.”_

* * *

_Says she talks to angels._  
They call her out by her name.  
“She Talks to Angels,” The Black Crowes

 

But for its two-night, End of the World Gala reopening, the Elysian Fields hotel (formerly known as the Muncie Value Inn) has been closed since the late 1990s, left to weather the elements and crumble to dust on a little-used exit off I-69, Southwest of Muncie, Indiana.

From the inside of the yellow cab, with the rain sliding in sheets down the windows, it’s hard to see anything but the hulking outline of the building.

“You sure this is the place?” says the cab driver over the sound of The Black Crowes singing about angels. “Don’t look like anyone’s been here in years.”

“Yes,” She says, pulling a handful of bills from Her inner coat pocket and handing them over the seat. “I might be a little while. Please wait.” If things go according to plan, She'll need the cab to ferry Her back to the hotel room She's rented. She won't have the energy to transport herself. It is novel, living like a mortal, even for a short time.

“Sure,” the driver says, brows rising at the sight of the hundreds. “Not a problem. You be careful. Whole thing looks like it could collapse.”

His concern is genuine and She spares him an easy smile before pulling Her umbrella from the foot well and opening the door.

The wind rips around Her, the rain sweeps under Her umbrella, wets Her hair, the length of Her skirt. Lightning cuts across the sky, lights up the whole building; She doesn’t need it to see the faint wisps of magic that had very recently beautified doorways and brightened the lights. They melt around the edges of door frames and windows, slowly fading away like someone’s dream.

The interior is back to its most recent look—broken chairs, torn wallpaper, dust-covered desk and the moldering ruin of a silver bell—but with the added motif of eviscerated gods. Corpses lie in Her path. She toes gingerly at one of them. The drying tissues drift apart like onion skin, the bones crumble to dust.

The vessels of gods don’t last long once those gods are dead.

Stepping over a thick dark pool of something more viscous than blood, She passes the ruin of a body She once recognized as Vishnu, passes another She knew to be Hermes. How many were here to wage war against a power they had so little hope of defeating?

She closes Her eyes, breathes deep, searching and finds familiar scents beneath the rich, meaty odor of blood. The first is full of contrast, scorching heat and bitter cold; it makes something deep in Her chest ache. The other, the one She’s looking for, is fainter, sweet and rich like warm caramel, sharp as the air during an electrical storm. She follows the scent to a large room that was probably once the jewel of the hotel.

Gabriel’s vessel lies in an alcove created by beams that have rotted through and fallen. His eyes are closed, his mouth coated with blood, his skin turned an ashen grey. The shadows of wings are burned into the floor.

She closes Her eyes. She remembers his wings. Six of them, arching across the sky, a torrent of sun-shaded lightning, interspersed with the blackness of space, celestial and sea blues and the liquid mercury sheen of stars.

And She remembers this vessel. Not of his own making, but he's kept it well. She saw it once, a long time ago by mortal reckoning, in the streets of Marrakesh, blending effortlessly into the market crowd as he followed a drunk and stinking man through the press of bodies. That man was the rapist of several young women. Later that evening, the man was found on an old tree, hanging by his intestines, his penis inside his mouth.

Those were early days, before he became more poetic, more artistic, more familiar with human irony.

Her Trickster.

Her Gabriel.

There’s another wrench in Her chest, a nova flair of pain. If She were human, She might have sat down on the floor and cried. But She isn’t human. And She has a job to do. There’s at least one thing She can make right tonight.

Reaching out, She lays a palm flat in the center of the vessel’s chest, feels the cold, the stillness, and the residue of an archangel’s power. It sings against Her own in harmony.

Gabriel is hers. The connection is still there, no matter how many millennia separate them. And She can find him.

But…

She reaches once more into the inner pocket of Her rain coat, withdraws a small vial of blood.

She won’t take unnecessary chances. Not for this.

Unfastening the first few buttons of the vessel’s shirt, She holds the vial over the center of his chest, above the heart, and snaps it in Her fingers. Shards of glass cut Her own skin and their blood mingles; She presses Her bloody palm to his chest, fingers spread like the limbs of a starfish, closes Her eyes and _reaches_ into his body.

Blood flows beneath his skin, flesh warms, loses its ashen shade. The thick muscle of the heart shifts, sluggish, beats once, twice and falls into a steady rhythm. The sucking wound beneath his sternum grows smaller and seals. The vessel is whole and ready.

That’s the easy part.

She keeps Her eyes closed, Her hand on his chest. To anyone looking on, She might just be a woman saying a prayer over the body of one fallen, if not for the subtle tremors of energy that spiral through the air, spark on Her skin. They raise the fine hairs on Her arms, make the finer hairs at Her temples crackle with static. Outside, the streetlamps flicker, grow dim.

In silence, She seeks. She needs no words for this. It’s old magic. Guardian to guarded. Creator to created. Mother to child.

Letting Herself seep through the crevices of Her own vessel, She looks at the world with a different set of eyes, examines the filaments of energy running from Her, disappearing into the ether.

She sorts through them, fingertips brushing over the ones still bright and pulsing with energy, shying away from those that have grown cold and dark, until She comes to his, cooled but still sparking.

Grasping it, She watches light and life flow back into it, the color brightening from gunmetal grey to sterling silver shot through with gold.

She tugs, finds resistance. She tugs harder, only to have the filament jerk obstinately. He always was a stubborn one. Maybe a few words were in order.

**#          #          #**

 

_He is everywhere and nowhere, in every time and apart from time itself. He can see the first fragments of lights, stars exploding and spreading their fertile insides across the galaxy before there were words for stars or galaxy or even time. He hears the chatter of billions of voices in thousands of languages and changing dialects, spanning centuries. He can smell the water and the rich muck of an Earth that’s still new, hear the sound of that first strange fish heaving itself up on the shore. The cornerstone of his Father’s creation. He can hear himself telling the little angels – the newest ones – to be careful of it. To watch over it._

_Something tugs at him. Around where his navel would be…if he had a navel._

_He ignores it in favor of watching a star in an unnamed galaxy go hypernova, of watching the first earthly bird, that would be called a bird, spread its wings and fly._

_He thinks he’s been here before, but before what? Before being given form or shape?_

_Then this might be non-existence, which, he supposes, could be worse._

_But if it’s non-existence then how, exactly, does he exist to think about the fact that he’s non-existent?_

_And that’s getting into philosophy, which he’s never been much for. Plato was a dick. And he never did pay back that debt—_

Gabriel.

_He knows that voice._

Gabriel?

_It’s been thousands of years, give or take a century, since he heard it last, out in the White Desert. Before he took up the mantle of Loki. Before he really knew what the hell he was doing._

_But it can’t be. It’s just a figment of his non-existent imagination._

**Gabriel.**

_Sharper this time and he perks up a non-existent ear at the tone._

**So help me, if you don’t come to me right now—** _The voice puts thunder to shame, would make oaks bend in its wake, cause rivers to flood…_

_It’s definitely Her._

_He feels that navel-tug again and this time he follows it, lets it pull him toward a corona of light that look like the electrical synapses inside a brain. For a moment, he wonders if that’s all this really is. A place made up inside someone’s head. A little human, perhaps, dreaming of him dreaming of her._

_Then the electric web does something strange. Its tendrils shiver, flow, reach for him. He reaches back. The fibers wind around his non-existent arm and **tug**_ _and then he’s flying, as he’s never flown before. All of space and time swirling around him, stars, moons, and planets spinning in a marvelous display, teeming with color. He catches a glimpse of a marble, small and beautiful and painted the deepest blues and greens._

_Then the spinning stops. And his vision goes white._

When you’ve been a pagan god for over 5,000 years, you get used to a little blood, a little pain. Preferably all of it mixed with a little sex.

There’s no sex.

And Gabriel has never felt pain quite like this.

He’s on fire. Or maybe his vessel is. He’s burning from the inside out like a billion heated kabobs tipped with tiny suns are piercing his skin. Inside his skull, his brain must be frying, celestial synapses charring and blackening tender curds of gray matter.

His fingertips gouge into the old Formica, the heels of his shoes squeak against the floor, his back arching, twisting. Opening his eyes, he can see nothing but white, the vague, black shape of someone kneeling next to him. He opens his mouth, tries to speak, to demand to know what is going on. In a week’s time, he’ll deny it all, but the only things that come out of his mouth now are non-verbal cries, strained whimpers.

“The rebirth is a painful process,” She says, sounding breathless. “I’m sorry.”

 _Holy fuck_ , Gabriel thinks. “Understatement,” is what he finally gasps out, throat wrenching, sounding like a 12-pack-a-day smoker.

When the fire beneath his skin dwindles to tingling warmth and the white light fades from his eyes, he can finally see the woman kneeling next to him.

She’s sleek and dark, dressed in a shimmering white tank top and colorful skirt. She sits with Her legs kicked around to one side, a Siren on a rock. On Her feet are gold sandals, on Her long arms, matching gold bangles. Her black hair is longer than when he’d last seen it and frames Her face, makes the deep red of Her lipstick more pronounced. Her large, dark eyes gleam. The after effects of power or the remnants of tears, Gabriel isn’t sure.

“My Gabriel. It’s good to see you.”

“You brought me back?” It’s a stupid question. And yet it seems important to ask.

They had not parted well the last time they’d been together. She’d been moving fully into Her role as Aset, benevolent mother, teacher, succor of the Egyptian people. And he? He had been not too long out of Heaven. 1,000 years by human count? 2,000? Petulant and pissed and not at all interested in motherly advice, occasionally taking on the role of spirit or avenging god, but generally keeping away from humanity.

“Of course I brought you back,” She says, as if the question doesn’t even warrant thought.

“How? Why?”

“Don’t think it was easy. Your former lover,” Isis pushes the word off Her tongue as if it tastes bad, “was helpful in supplying the catalyst.” She holds out Her palm; in it are shards of broken glass, traces of blood gone goopy around the edges. “And, well, “witness protection” or not, there’s still enough of me in you to find you when I need to.” 

“Great. Celestial Lo-Jack.”

Isis doesn’t look impressed. “As to the rest...let’s call it what it is: an act of love, wide-reaching and not only for you. It has to stop, Gabriel. You have to ensure it stops.”

He snorts. “Yeah. Already tried that and wound up as a kabob. On my own skewer. Being the Trickster doesn’t mean I don’t learn from my mistakes.” And after that little showdown, he’d like to crawl away and lick his wounds in private, thank you. Well, maybe have someone else lick his wounds. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Though he does know some nymphs who are into blood play….

He’s driven from his reverie by Isis standing, gauzy skirt swinging around Her ankles, brushing against him. She smells like juniper and fresh wind, sweet grasses, clear water. Things that make his traitorous little heart lurch, thinking of the past, of home.

“You’re too much like your father,” She says, shaking Her head. The charms dangling from Her ears jingle. She takes a deep breath, full mouth pressing tight. Gabriel can see the wear in Her, the fatigue in Her stance.

“What would you know about it?” He tries and fails to get his feet under him.

“If you hadn’t run from the beginning. If you had taken Sam into your charge as you were supposed to—”

“So it’s my fault?” He’s on his feet. Was he always this short?

“It’s everyone’s fault!” The timbre of Her voice flares on the second word. Somewhere, drywall crumbles to the floor, a light fixture crashes to the ground. “None of us are blameless. Not even me.” She seems to shrink, eyes falling shut.

There’s a tug in his belly and Gabriel’s torn between wanting to hug Her and wanting to scream.

“I left you all too much alone, even before your father left, too busy with my own adherents, the faith raised in my name.” She smiles sadly. “My errant children. I’d hoped my influence might be enough to give you independence, guide you…maybe it was. Just in the wrong direction. Even now, your brothers work to usher in the apocalypse.”

“Hard to argue with fate and prophecy.”

“This is not fate, Gabriel. It’s middle management running interference.”

Gabriel snorts a laugh, groans as it pulls something in his sternum. Tender tissue and wounded grace where Lucifer had split him open.

_Remember, you learned all your tricks from me, little brother._

Not all of them.

Isis is there, hand brushing over the phantom wound.

Gabriel meets Her eyes. “What can I do?” It’s a plea.

“Help make it right.”

“How?”

She shakes Her head, reaches into the pocket of Her skirt, and pulls out two more glass vials of blood, hands them over. “Go to Sam Winchester. It all revolves around the Winchesters. You’ll figure it out."

“And you’ll be…where? Box seats to the End of the World?

She smiles, a spread of lips, a clenching of teeth. “Cleaning up my own messes. Looking after my children. The ones on Earth and in Heaven. I won’t leave you all alone again.”

And with that, She slips out the door, footsteps soft on the hotel parquet, leaving nothing but a lingering trace of juniper and a discombobulated archangel holding vials of blood from the people who were destined to end the world…or save it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look at that. I actually managed to review and post this a week ahead of schedule. 
> 
> It's hard, when my brain is being eaten by Star Wars fics I have in the works. Anakin's incredibly pushy and he's taking up a lot of my mental space. Actually, so is Qui-Gon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam dreams of the dead. Lucifer's there to give him absolution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm right on the two week schedule this week. Just after the Solstice and just before Christmas. So, happy/merry whatever. 
> 
> I hope those who've stuck around are enjoying yourselves.

* * *

  _'Cause every time you close your eyes_  
_You know they're right behind you and you wonder_  
_If you'll ever live again_

“Stay Awake,” Dishwalla

* * *

 

 

They get to Bobby's late, despite a near non-stop drive. The sulfur yellow porch light is a beacon, guiding the Impala into the yard. It leaves the night beyond even darker. Sam's shoulder blades itch as he gets out of the car and peers into the blackness, past the hulking shapes of ruined cars, half expecting to find Lucifer watching him.

Inside the house, the lights burn bright, the scent of coffee lingers on the air, buttressed by the sharp tang of whiskey. Bobby's in the library-cum-living room, hunched over his desk, nearly nose to page with a book that looks like it would've been old when God was young.

“Don't think osmosis works on books, Bobby,” says Dean. Bobby jumps—there seems to be a lot of that going around, thinks Sam—and glares at Dean. “Find anything?”

“Biblical lore's pretty unhelpful. The Horsemen will come, they'll do what they're named for. Best I can figure, we're looking for trail markers. For Pestilence...people dropping down sick an—”

“For Death, people dropping dead? People die every damned day, Bobby, it's not a neon sign.”

The look on Bobby's face is unimpressed.

Sam sighs. “Dean.”

“Yeah….” Dean paces, covers the library with a few long strides, picks up a book and flops down on the couch, legs straight out in front of him. “So, sickness, plagues. Anything popping up on the news?”

“Not so much as an STD flare up on a Naval base,” Bobby says, flicking the TV on, volume turned low, before going back to his books.

Sam fishes out his laptop, sets up at the kitchen table to pore through online newspapers for signs of minor epidemics.

And Dean...Dean alternates between staring at the book he picked up and staring through the window. Sam counts the minutes before his brother drops the book on Bobby's desk, mutters something about needing a beer and leaves.

As the rumble of the Impala's engine fades, Bobby looks up. “Still no word from Cas?” It's the elephant no one wants to point out.

“It's been over a week,” Sam says. Bobby, mouth grim, presses his nose back into his book.

Two hours later, Sam closes the laptop, eyes grainy and muscles aching, his mind none the wiser about where Pestilence might be. Bobby'd passed out on the bed in the library an hour ago. It's nearing two in the morning and Dean's not back yet, so Sam hauls himself up to the guest bedroom and falls into bed. The mattress is cool and creaky and there's a spring that's hard to avoid, but it's familiar. He and Dean shared this bed as kids, fought over it as adults. He buries his face in the pillow, breathing in the scent of cool, stale linen and lets sleep claim him before he can even begin to worry about where his dreams will take him.

He's back in the hotel. The smell of blood is strong in the air; he's smelled enough of it in his lifetime to recognize it easily. It's thick and heady and clings to the back of his tongue.

Barefoot, and wondering idly how he lost his shoes, why he was in the middle of a blood-scented room in only his soft sleep pants and t-shirt, he walks down the hall, toward the conference room. The hallway is longer than he remembers and the walls bow inward and outward in strange angles, like something out of Lovecraft. He tries not to look too closely at them.

He skirts around a body on the floor; it's barely recognizable. He wonders who this was as he catches sight of the long blond hair stained red by blood. He sees the flash of a brown eye, the curve of a familiar mouth. A mouth he sees whenever he looks at Dean's face. Their mother's mouth.

John is a little further down, hanging out of the wall like a piece of strange art, head turned almost upside down on his neck. One of his eyes lies on his cheek, held onto his face by a strand of ropy tendon. The iris gleams sulfur yellow in the meagre light.

At the end of the hall, beneath the twisted frame of the conference room door, Sam stops abruptly. Something in him shifts and he feels…less like he's in a dream, more like he's himself. Rooted in his skin. The odor of blood lies thick on the back of his tongue, sharp and metallic and much, much too strong of a taste.

And beneath the odor of death, the smell of citrus and lily-of-the-valley, sharp and sweet and achingly familiar. He'd bought that perfume for Jess's birthday, that last year. He breathes deep, catches the scent in his lungs, chokes as it carries with it the thickness of ash, the heat of flame.

He steps into the room and sees a crumpled form with blond curls clinging to half her face, stuck to the burns that dribble across her skin like melted wax. The mouth he kissed more times than he can count turns up in a wry smile. Her dark eyes roll to look up at him. “This doesn't have to continue, Sam.”

Sam stumbles back.

Jess rises to her feet, moves toward him, her breath sweet against his face, her hand on his shoulder. And this feels too familiar, too reminiscent of a hotel in Kansas City, with a too big queen bed, a too empty room.

“No.”

“Sam.” The tone is admonishing. And then Jess's face shifts, broadens, hair shortening, eyes turning pale. “All you have to do,” Lucifer begins, and Sam thinks this is really becoming repetitive, “is say yes.”

Lucifer raises his hand, cups Sam's face. The gesture is too warm, too intimate. For the briefest, craziest moment, Sam is overwhelmed with the urge to lean into that contact, press his face to the cool skin, close his eyes. He could rest.

“Just that. And it all stops. No more pain. No more loss.” In the room just behind Lucifer, Gabriel, looking very much alive, has slipped in close, his angel blade at the ready. Lucifer spins and turns the blade on his brother. Sam knows he's seeing what happened after he and Dean had fled the Elysian Fields. He's seeing one more life lost on his watch, one more life lost on account of his actions.

Lucifer drives the blade into Gabriel's chest. There's no white light in this recreation, only the angel slumping against his brother, eyes closed, mouth slack. Looking over his shoulder, Lucifer says, somber, understanding, “Just one word, Sam. And there will be no more blood on your hands.”

“ _Sam_.” The voice doesn’t belong to Lucifer. It’s resonant and strange and comes from everywhere and nowhere, seeping through the shadows of the room.

Sam looks to Lucifer, whose eyes flare in surprise when the body slumped against him jolts upright, jerking like a puppet whose strings have been pulled, the slack face animating.

Gabriel's eyes narrow, his thin mouth pulling tight as he looks down at the blade buried in his chest, at his brother's hand still wrapped loosely around the hilt. “Liked it so much, you got the home video on repeat, brother?” He pulls himself back and there's a wet sucking noise as the blade slides out him. Sam thinks maybe his dreams are too realistic when it comes to sound quality.

When Lucifer speaks, his voice is so soft, so muted by wonder, that Sam can barely hear him. “ _Gabriel_.”

 

# ~ # ~ #

 

Being dead takes its toll.

Even on an archangel.

Even on an archangel who's only been dead but a few moments in the timeless span of the universe.

Gabriel _hurts._ The edges of his grace rub raw inside the not quite human form he wears, a form that has fit him wonderfully for over a thousand years. Right now, it's as if he's been jammed back into a place not meant for him. Square peg, round hole, all that. He flexes inside the vessel, spreading, filling the dark crevices of the body, filling it as well as he ever did.

It's not a problem with the fit.

Which means it's in his head, this feeling of being too big, too much. He remembers it. Felt it years ago when he first folded down and crammed himself into Loki's hand-crafted body, demoting himself from Archangel, Herald, the End, to trickster god. He'd built a wall between himself and the Host, with just the right amount of cracks to let him keep an ear out to what they were getting up to, all while keeping himself hidden.

He can feel them now, his siblings, though Isis had repaired his wall with an almost exact replica, save for widening a few cracks. Her not so subtle suggestion as to what he should do. But the sounds of the Host are muffled and far away and when he concentrates too much on them it hurts, like poking a finger into a sucking wound. He doesn't have the energy to deal with that decision. Not yet.

He pushes himself off what's left of the table he's been leaning against for longer than he'd like to admit. It's time to blow this cesspit.

Stretching his wings tentatively, he takes to the air, slipping in between space and time, gets too caught up in the feel of flying and almost face-plants on the couch in his living room. He stays draped over the arm of the sofa for a moment before heaving himself up and across the room, shedding clothing as he goes. His shirt peels away with a wet tearing sound, tacky from the dried blood, and he makes a note to set the thing on fire when he has more control over his faculties.

Inside the bathroom, he avoids the too large mirror hanging over the sink, heading straight for his shower, the opulence of which is certainly not lost on him in this moment. He points the multiple shower heads at his body and turns the spray on hot. Hotter than any human would be able to stand it. Hotter than conventional non angelic-magic-enhanced water heaters would be able to get it. (The human occupants of this building had quickly learned not to overestimate how far they'd need to turn their faucet handles.)

He's not above moaning as the water beats down on him, driving into sore muscles, heating his blood, his death-chilled skin.  Blood washes down the drain, red then pink and then the water runs clear and Gabriel leans back against the steam warmed tile and takes stock of his body. Because it is his, as much as it ever could be, with its slightly bowed legs and long feet. The hip bones jut out and the smooth curve of belly speaks of the excess pleasures the demi-god who wore it before often indulged in, lightly muscled, yes, but there's no six pack here….but no need for exercise, either. Gabriel's human body is a form frozen in time and shape. Which is why he eventually took to decorating it.

The captive bead on the foreskin ring glitters like a jewel drop as he washes himself. His fingers swirl over the band of black ink on his left bicep—a mix of Enochian and old Norse spellwork that help keep him off Heaven's radar—trace the slim, blue-black and gold feather on the smooth flesh of his inner left forearm.

He washes his face, his torso, fingers dropping to his sternum, beneath the apex of his ribs. He feels his chest expand, lungs filling with unneeded air, the flesh holding in his breath, smooth and unmarred. He almost wishes Isis had left something of the wound. A discoloration, a delicate indent, a scar, _something_. Some memento for having been murdered by his brother.

Shaking his head, he sheds water like a dog, then turns off the tap. There will be no long lingering under the endless hot water. Not today.

Out of the shower, he moves to his bedroom, drying off with a thick, soft towel as he goes, letting it fall to the floor as he collapses face first onto his bed. It feels too large, too empty and, for a moment, he considers snapping up a playmate or two. A beautiful, softly curved woman he could bury his face against. A pretty man with broad shoulders and strong fingers who could work the kinks out of his back. But he dismisses the idea with a weary sigh. Instead, he rolls along the bed, taking the plush quilt with him until he's cocooned in softness and warmth. Playmates would take energy he needs to heal.

He closes his eyes, feels the weight of the blanket around him, the firmness of the mattress. The air of the room is cool, stirred by the soft breath of the air conditioner. Combined, the creature comforts bring the bewitching sensation of drowsiness. Angels don't need to sleep. Not in the same way humans do, with that complete loss of consciousness. Though he had enjoyed that on occasion—mostly when he'd found himself worn out and tangled together with a partner (or two) who was just as worn out—he still finds mortal sleep disturbing. But angels do need to recharge their batteries. Especially after traumatic events.

He gives himself over to the state. His eyes close, his breath deepens, his body stills. To an onlooker, he would be fast asleep. But he'll know, if someone should enter his home (if they manage to pass his wards, first) and would be up and moving before they realized he was awake. But he's the only one here. His wards are in place. They'll alert him. So he lets that awareness shift to the back of his consciousness and then he does something he hasn't done in years.

Every angel has a bevy of souls under their watch. Souls to guide, to assist in times of great need, to save in the face of tragedy. Some angels are more hands-on than others, leading their charges with signs as blunt as traffic signals, clear messages whispered in dreams, splashed across mortal brains like neon “Eat at Joe's” signs. Others are more cryptic, preferring to provide messages through everyday things: a familiar scent, a favorite song, the coffee grounds in the bottom of a mug. And some of those, Gabriel was proud to say, had a streak of humor which led to the occasional religious symbolism on a piece of toast or in the glaze on a cinnamon bun. Still, others prefer nothing more than to watch the show, the experiment that is humanity. Gabriel has always walked a line between cryptic and blunt, when he chose to intervene at all. (Sometimes people just had to learn through their own mistakes.)

Regardless of their intervention style, every angel had the ability to tune in on their charges. Gabriel hasn't done that for centuries. But it's a little like a human riding a bike. Or, he supposes, more like a human learning to walk. It's ingrained in the very nature of the Host.

All the previous times he had found the Winchesters, it had been more a matter of letting them come to him. All he'd needed to do was make a frat boy dance with an alien, imbue a Mystery Spot with an _actual_ mystery, or put out a painfully obvious APB and then sit back and watch the two come a-running.

But with him being….somewhat incapacitated and Cas's little mojo on their ribs (which Gabriel commends him for, Cas always was one who thought ahead), he can't simply pinpoint their location or draw them to his. But he can make contact by relying on something even a thousand plus years playing a trickster god couldn't get rid of.  That immutable connection to his charges that's imprinted on his very grace at the moment of their births.

Finding a human mind is not unlike swimming through the sea at night, your path lit only by the gleam of moonlight on a wave, the shimmer of stars, as you try to find one particular phosphorous flicker in the deep. He's not sure how long it takes him, drifting among the human minds. It might be minutes or hours before he finds the one he's looking for. It seems the younger Winchester finally decided to get some rest and Gabriel slips inside his dreaming mind with ease, finds himself rather disconcertingly back in the last position he wants to be in. There's the problem with stumbling through mortal minds. You never knew when you were going to end up with the mental copy of your body skewered like shish kebab.

Though he does enjoy the look on Lucifer's face when he realizes the facsimile of Gabriel on the end of his blade is, in fact, the real thing. Well, more or less. The look on Sam's face he enjoys….less. And damn his puppy dog eyes anyway, Gabriel thinks. That's what led to this whole mess in the first place.

_Something twisted inside Gabriel when Sam Winchester—standing over a pool of blood from a man he thought his surrogate father, dead by Sam's own hand—says “Please.” Not says. Breathes it out like a prayer, a benediction. A cry for absolution. **Please** bring his brother back. _

_That twists something in him hasn't been tweaked in centuries. No… Decades. Not since that ephemeral moment Gabriel had felt the world shudder as Lucifer's vessel—Sam Winchester—came into being. As that bright soul was entrusted into his care, beguiling him to go so far as to visit the child's nursery. He'd watched as Mary Winchester put her newborn down to sleep and then stole close to the crib when she'd left, leaning low over the edge, and finding a pair of warm, hazel eyes staring at him._

It always comes back to those eyes.

Gabriel takes a breath and repeats what he's afraid is going to become a refrain when dealing with Sam Winchester, “You're breaking my heart, kid.”

Lucifer makes a noise, part surprise, part fury, part sob. Or maybe that's just Gabriel's mind playing tricks on him. He doesn't look at his brother. He's staring at Sam. “Put the doe eyes away. And put away any thought you have to say ‘yes’ to my brother. It's not going to end here, you get me?”

Sam nods, hesitantly at first, then with a renewed surety and Gabriel feels something loosen inside him.  Then the dream lurches around him as something tugs at his grace. He would stay longer, maybe run his brother out of Sam's mind—Sam may be Lucifer's vessel but he is Gabriel's to watch over—only that tug is insistent, pulling him back to consciousness. So he commands Sam to _wake_ and puts as much angelic authority behind it as he can muster before he lets himself snap back into his body.

His skin is vibrating as he opens his eyes, stares up at the mural of the sky that stretches across his ceiling, the dusk bleeding into night, bleeding into dawn. His head is muzzy, he still aches in places he didn't know existed and the itch of his wards going haywire is near to driving him insane. But he feels more like himself. Enough so that he doesn't even bother with snapping up clothes as he moves from the plushness of his bed to see what the racket is all about.

 

 

**# ~ # ~ #**

 

 _Now, **wake up**_.

Gabriel's voice echoes through Sam's head, sonorous and powerful like the tolling of an ancient church bell. There's no gasp for breath, no jerking into an upright position. Sam merely opens his eyes, staring at the old water stain on Bobby's ceiling. It looks like the continent of Oceania.

The air around him is early-morning cool. Voices filter up from downstairs, along with the smell of coffee, rich and dark and beguiling him to get out of bed. But he's reluctant to move. As if he'll disturb the sudden shift in his reality.

The dream had felt real, toward the end. Real like Lucifer walking in Jess's skin in the motel, months ago. He recognized the feel of the angel. The magnetic pull, the strange lucidity that came with his presence.

But what about Gabriel? Could he be alive? Or was he just a stand-in for Sam's subconscious guilt?? Or worse, a creation of Lucifer's meant to trick him? Sam had only ever had Lucifer dreamwalk in his head. He had no baseline for other angels. Asking Dean is out. Any mention of Cas right now made his brother tight-lipped. They haven't heard a peep since Van Nuys. For all they know, Cas was obliterated when he whammied the other angels out of the way.

Another casualty Sam can add to the ever growing list.

He sighs, pushes himself out of the bed.

In the kitchen, there's coffee, and a bag of savory smelling takeout that Sam pokes through, finding hash browns and a sausage biscuit, still warm. Sam wonders if Dean slept at all last night.

He carries his breakfast into the library, snagging Bobby's desk chair out of the corner and setting up on the edge of the old desk, nudging books and papers aside. Bobby gives him a look that promises a painful death if anything gets spilled on the books, before turning his attention back to the television, flicking through the channels aimlessly before he gives up and goes back to the book spread open in his lap. It's a collection of crossword puzzles.

It's never a good sign when Bobby abandons research for crosswords.

Dean tromps through the room, toweling grease off his hands, heading for the kitchen. He returns after a moment, grease free and carrying the apple pie that was in the bottom of the takeout bag. He settles on the edge of Bobby's bed, waving off a warning about getting apple crumbs in the sheets.

Bobby scribbles something for 37-down. Sam flips through the pages of his book, the same passages he'd read last night, giving him nothing new. Dean takes a bite of his pie, watches the oozing filling as if it might hold the answers to the secrets of the universe.

The air is heavy with their silence, tense with the weight of their helplessness, sour and sharp with the combined need to be doing something more than sitting on their asses.

Dean’s head turns sharply back to the television. “Turn that up.”

Bobby cranks the volume. The news plays a story out of Nevada. A placid looking anchor in black tie and grey jacket reads details about a sudden surge in flu cases.

Sam pauses with his coffee cup at his lips. Dean sets his pie on the edge of Bobby's desk; it's mostly untouched (and if that isn't a sure sign of the encroaching apocalypse, Sam doesn't know what is).

Grabbing his jacket, Dean says “let's hit the road,” and is out the door before Sam or Bobby can say anything.

The two men share a look, one that's been passed between them innumerable times before, and Sam shrugs, wads up the greasy papers from his breakfast. “We'll call you from Nevada.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the search for Pestilence. Sam realizes and reveals a secret.

* * *

  _Is anybody out there?  
Is anybody listening?_

“Holding On and Letting Go,” Ross Copperman

* * *

 

 

The Impala glides through the night like a ghost, wheels quiet on the highway, engine purring contentedly beneath the hood, frame nearly imperceptible in the darkness. Outside the windows, the Nevada desert expands around them, rock formations and buttes stretching toward the sky, alien-looking in the darkness. The night sky seems lower than usual, cold white stars hanging in the blackness, bright, twinkling, empty.

A lot like the file Sam's been going through. He'd used his CDC authority to swipe it from the last lab they'd visited. He's been double-checking patient files and symptoms for anything strange that the doctors might have missed and coming up empty-handed.

“Nothing?” Dean asks.  
  
“Ah...typical swine flu. Typical symptoms. No murderous rampages… Never thought I'd be wishing for some.”

“Down the rabbit hole, Sammy,” Dean says as Sam pulls out his cell and dials Bobby with a single key stroke. Bobby answers on the second ring. He must have been waiting for them. There isn't much to strategize. They'll keep heading East, eyes and ears open for more disease flare ups.

Sam's just hanging up the phone when he feels it. Heat trickling along his skin, like the ephemeral brush of warm fingertips, the itching tingle of insect legs. The feeling that tells him what's coming even before the familiar voice in the back of the seat, gritty and tired, says “I've got an idea.”

The Impala screeches to a halt and the demon blade's in Sam's hand and driven into the leather seat before he really has a moment to think about it. But Crowley's gone and—

Standing outside Sam's window, knuckles rapping on the glass, one dark eyebrow arched in a question. Or a challenge. But he backs off as Sam pushes himself out of the car, Dean following closely behind him.

“Easy Moose,” he hisses, as Sam advances on him with the knife, sending Crowley scuttling around the Impala. When the words have no effect, he turns to Dean. “Call off your dog.”

“Gimme one reason,” Dean says.

“Pestilence,” the demon says, biting off the last syllable and Dean goes still. Crowley brushes the lapels of his suit, removing invisible lint or dust, all the while keeping one eye on Sam, who slows but holds the knife like he's ready to use it. That's one thing Sam will say about Crowley, he has more self-preservation instinct than most demons. 

Which doesn't seem to be catching, Sam concludes after a quick conversation. Said conversation ends in a demonic tantrum and a broken street lamp and has them agreeing to accompany Crowley to his home on the lam. He and Dean get back into the Impala, with the demon slipping into the backseat.  This won't be the first time they've followed a demon home; it will be the first time they've done so with one giving directions.

Once he's rattled off the last bits of the instructions that will lead them to a neighborhood not far outside Reno, Crowley leans back into the leather seat, folds his hands over his belly, and lets out a content sigh. Dean grips the wheel a little a little tighter. Sam looks out the window. The silence is heavy until Crowley breaks it. “Sam...those were some fast reflexes. One might almost say…smiteful. Kudos.”

“You don't think we've had enough demons dropping in on us that I've had the practice?” Sam doesn't look, but he can practically hear Crowley lifting his hands in placation.

“Just a bit more fluid this time, is all. Drawing on that vessel-link, maybe? Must be good for something more than getting people killed.”

“What?” says Dean at the same time Sam says “Shut up.”

“Sam.” Dean's tone is one that's Sam's become well reacquainted with over the last year. It's a close relative of the tone Sam grew up with. The one Dean wore when he was on the point of exasperation with his kid brother

“I didn't. It's—”

“A little angelic-vessel juju lets him sense when demons are coming, perhaps?” Crowley says. 

Something cold settles in the pit of Sam's stomach, worms tendrils out from the center of him, pierces the tender tissues of his lungs and heart, washes over his muscles and slides into his veins, freezing him in place. Outside, the black night seems ready to swallow him whole.

“Wait...” Dean says, lost and clearly not happy about it. “You knew he was here. You felt him?”

“No,” Sam breathes and the exhale brings realization, pieces of a puzzle he hadn't realized was a puzzle flying together. How could he have missed it? The shift that took place after all those nights alone and dreaming of a dead woman whose face was being worn by the Devil himself. “It's like…a whisper or a hum? Like when someone's just left a room but you can still feel them there, or when the TV's been muted. It's...background noise.

“Why not mention it before?”

“It was _nothing_ ,” Sam says and even to himself, he doesn't sound convincing. “I noticed the demons a little quicker, a little sooner. I thought I was getting an edge. But it wasn't anything to write home about. It didn't save Ellen. It didn't save Jo.”

“Or Bobby.”

“I didn't...have it then.”

Dean goes still for a moment and Sam can practically hear the gears turning; his brother's fingertips squeak on the wheel as he works through equations of time and place. Sam can see the moment Dean comes to the same realization Sam had just moments before.  
  
“And when we were at the I Hate Luci reunion?” Dean asks, the edge in his voice is sharp and brittle. “What kind of background noise did you get there?”

Sam stares through windshield, sees a hotel instead of the moonlit road.

_Despite its spaciousness, the Elysian Fields conference room is sending his brain into a claustrophobic spin as he listens to shouting in the hall, hears the crunch of bones, the spatter of blood. His hands are empty, clean but he can feel the sticky-slickness and heat sliding over his knuckles, his forearms. And he's pleased. No. Not him. Not Sam. Lucifer's pleased._

“The pagan smorgasbord?” Dean says, looking at him and for a moment Sam hates the way his brother's always been able to read him, wants to tell him to put his eyes back on the damned road. But he doesn't.

Instead, he says, “I felt them die. I felt him kill them all.”

“That's how you knew about Gabriel.” Dean lets out a whistling breath. “And now?”

“Nothing,” Sam says. “Nothing from _him_. It's just like it was. Crowley? Yeah, I felt him before I heard him. But there's nothing else. Maybe it's a proximity thing. Closer I am to Lu—him…the stronger the link, the senses?” He pauses. “Dean. I didn't mention it because I didn't realize. But it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't change anything. I'm still me.”

Silence again. Normally, this is when Dean would switch on some loud music to cover up the discomfort. He doesn't have to.

“If you lovebirds are done with the heart to heart,” Crowley says, “the exit was a half-mile back.”

 

**~ # ~ # ~ # ~**

The neighborhood Crowley guides them to is very old and the part that hasn't been gobbled up by the most recent urban development is going to seed. Even in the dark, Sam can see grasses climbing broken-down wooden fences, porches sagging with the weight of years, cars that are little more than rust sitting low on bald tires.

Crowley's house is just as bad as the neighborhood would predict, full of dust and the odor of rot. Furniture molders in dark rooms, the floorboards curl in the corners and they have to watch where they put their feet for fear of jagged nails or softened wood ready to swallow a leg up to its ankle.

But all in all, Crowley's life on the lam doesn't look entirely unlike an average month for a Winchester. Up to and including some of the warding etched on the broken doors and windows. But still…

“This is insane,” Sam says, going through the gun bag they've laid out on the wooden table.

“I don't disagree.” Dean checks his clip, slides the gun into the inner pants holster at the small of his back.

“Then why are we listening to him?”

“Sam—“ Dean's sigh is explosive and when he looks up, he's wearing that look Sam's become so familiar with. It's a lighter version of the one he wore when Sam killed Samhain, and again when Dean discovered the full measure of Sam's relationship with Ruby. The one that makes Sam feel tired and faintly sick.

“Dean, if I'd thought it was important, I would've told—“

“Hey. This isn't about that. This is about Pestilence. And let's face it, Sam, what's our plan? Drive around until we stumble into a plague zone? No. This, at least, is useful. Even if we don’t get the Horseman…well, there's always demons,” he says and slides a flask of holy water into his inner jacket pocket.

The floorboards creak as Crowley enters the room. Sam glares at him. Dean says, “You ready to go?”

“Born ready. Leave the Morningstar suit.” He looks at Sam. “Keep the home fires burning, eh?”

Sam grabs Crowley's shoulder as the demon turns. “Wait a minute. I'm going.”

“Hands off the apparel. It costs more than your wardrobes combined. And, no. You're not.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Crowley's voice lilts, eyebrows rising as though he's just been asked The World's Most Incredibly Stupid question. “You mean, aside from the fact that I don't like you. I don't trust you, _and_ you keep trying to kill me? How about your little body and soul love connection with Satan?”

Sam balks. “That's—“

“A perfectly logical concern. Yes, I know. I don't care about excuses or hypotheses. I care that you're an unknown who also has some kind of link to the bloody devil. You stay.” He points to Dean. “He goes. What's it going to be?

The look on Dean's face says if it wouldn't have been a waste of bullets, he'd have pulled his gun and shot someone. Sam turns to Crowley with a smirk.

“Oh, well. Enjoy your last few sunsets.”

“Wait….”

Crowley pauses in the doorway. Sam whips around.

“I'll go.” Dean meets Sam's eyes. “What can I say? I believe the guy,” he finishes, heading for the front door.

Sam stands on the porch, hunched against the night and the cool breeze, the ice in his belly. He watches the taillights of the Impala as they disappear down the road. Watches Dean drive away with a demon riding shotgun. Watches until the night swallows the car. Then he walks back into the house and slams the door behind him.

He prowls from empty room to empty room, all anger and excess energy. He doesn't entirely blame Dean for being pissed about the link with Lucifer, even if Sam's certain it's only a one way thing and not harmful in itself. But to leave Sam behind? To choose to have a demon at his back?

Sam slams into the kitchen, knocking the already loose door askew. The room, like most of the others, is a ruin of peeled wallpaper, scattered paint chips, rotting floor and decaying Formica countertops. But Sam spies something in the midst of the decay, a bottle in the recesses of one of the cabinets, shining and new and out of place. He picks it up, reads the label—Glencraig—and huffs a laugh. Being on the lam hasn't stopped Crowley from buying the good stuff.

The bottle is unopened and he uncaps it and takes a long draught, relishing the burn, before carrying it with him to the dusty slip covered chair that sits in the memory of the living room.

On an empty stomach, it doesn't take much for the alcohol to weave warm, soothing tendrils through his body, his brain, easing some of the tension, letting him think more clearly. He remembers he should probably call Bobby and let him know what's happening in case something goes very wrong. With Crowley, that's almost a guarantee.

The conversation doesn't take long to turn into some kind of fucked up therapy session. They trod over the already trampled ground of brothers and trust issues exacerbated by demons, and Sam can hear the weariness in Bobby's voice. He's sorry for it.

“Well, Sam…it's crazy,” Bobby says when Sam's told him about Dean's partnership with Crowley, “but after a year of chasing zilch, maybe it's time to go crazy…” Which is really pretty much what Dean had said. Which means, maybe, what Sam's been thinking, on and off, for the last few months—longer, if he's honest with himself—isn't so off point.

“Hey, Bobby…when you were possessed, Meg, she told you to kill Dean…”

“Yeah…” The suspicion is already thick in Bobby's voice and Sam can picture the man sitting up straighter in his wheelchair.

“And you didn't,” Sam continues, “you took control, took your body back.”

Bobby snorts and there's the squeak of hospital-grade vinyl. “Sure, just long enough to shank myself.”

“How'd you take back the wheel?”

Silence. He can hear Bobby breathing. Then, “why are you asking, Sam?”

“I've been thinking.” Sam takes a long pull from the bottle, closes his eyes. “We get the keys to the Cage, pop the lid...and then what? Ask the Devil, politely, to jump in? Think that's going to work?”

“You got me.”  
  
“But,” Sam goes on, because if he doesn't get this out now, he won't. “What if you guys lead the Devil to the edge...and I jump?”

“Sam,” the line shrieks, the phone squeaking in Bobby's hand. “Are you idjits _trying_ to kill me? We just—“

“ _Bobby_. I'm not going to do it. Not unless we all agree. But…” a half laugh, “we gotta be realistic here. We don't have a lot of options.”

“This _isn't_ an option. What I did? It's a million to one. A billion. And that was some piss ant demon. You think you're just going to wrestle back control from Satan himself?”

“Bobby—“

“There's a _reason_ it's called _possession_ , Sam. You of all people should know that.”

“I'm strong enough.” It sounds petulant, even to Sam. And what he hears next makes him feel even more so, under the sting.  
  
“No,” Bobby says, “you're not. You know it. He knows it too. And he's going to find every insecurity, every chink in your armor, Sam. And he'll use it. Your fear, your grief, your anger. And you're not exactly Mr. Anger-Management… How are you going to control the devil when you can't even control yourself?”

**~#~#~#~**

 

Bobby's question follows him around the abandoned rooms, follows him as the Impala's headlights flood the place. It follows him as Dean stares at him, serious and stern and speaking with that calm voice that always heralds something terrible, “Sam, I need you to stay on mission, here.”

The question’s swept away, along with every other thought about Lucifer, about the apocalypse, when he hears a voice he hasn't heard in years. A voice he never expected to hear, muffled by a cloth sack, coming from a man sitting on a chair in a crudely drawn Devil's Trap, inside a decaying house that's miles and years away from the brightly lit classrooms and claustrophobic dorms where he'd last heard it.

“Sam? That you?”

“ _Brady_.” Sam's stomach lurches, sinks somewhere around his knees. He knows what's coming. His mind may not want to process it, but he _knows_.

And with the smug, self-satisfied tone of a snake-oil salesman, the demon inside Brady lays it all out: what he did to Brady, what he did to Jess. And all of that _just_ to get to Sam. By the time he's done, the world has gone grey-matte around the edges and Dean's hauling him from the room, telling him to get it together.

It'd be easy enough, especially with Crowley disappeared to stir up a demon's nest, to get the demon-Brady all to himself. Easy enough to barricade Dean in the bathroom when he goes to rinse his face. Easy enough to take Ruby's knife and, _so slowly_ , slice at all the non-vital parts, watch the sunburst flares of light erupt from the demon's skin, until he's satisfied the demon has felt as much pain as Sam has these last few years. (It won't. It can't.) 

But he doesn't.

Because Bobby's voice, stern and kind and all kinds of fed up at once, keeps running through his head. _How are you going to control the devil when you can't even control yourself?_

When Dean comes back into the room, Sam's leaning against the far wall and the demon-Brady's sneering at him.  
  
Dean says, “Sam?”

“We're good.” 

Dean looks incredulous.

“Seriously. Look at him. Not a scratch.”

“Good,” Dean says slowly. “Awesome. On-mission. About time things started going right.”

That’s the moment Crowley shows up with a hellhound on his trail.

**~#~#~#~**

 

Hours later, Sam's in the bathroom of a no-tell motel off I-80 in western Wyoming. He’s listening to Dean in the main room. After hanging up with Bobby—having given him the news of Pestilence’s location (courtesy of the demon-Brady, just before Sam slid the demon blade between his ribs) and set him researching the area—Dean had turned on the television, tuned it to a 24 hour news channel and run out to the office to buy a paper before hunkering down for the night.

Dean says he's looking for signs of Death and any other apocalyptic douchebags. Sam's sure that's true. He's also sure Dean's searching for word of Cas beneath all the strange headlines. Has been since the angel disappeared. Sam doesn't blame him. Cas is the greatest ally they've ever encountered—hellhound-raising demons notwithstanding, though Crowley's not really an ally, even if he did save them from being puppy chow—not to mention, in a weird and rather ironic way (par for the course for Winchesters), Cas seems to be on his way to becoming Dean's best friend.

Despite the lack of news, despite the gut-deep feeling that this is just one more thing gone wrong, Sam hopes the angel's okay. For Cas’s sake as much as Dean's. They've lost too much and too many on this desperate run. Something deep in his chest twinges and he swallows around the lump in his throat, and sets the shower running, hot as he can stand it. He scalds his skin, but it doesn't wash away the memory of Jo torn apart by hellhounds, of Ellen's face as she stays by her daughter’s side, of Bobby's when he knows he'll never walk again. It doesn't ease the years old pain of Jess, in pain and half alive on the ceiling or of her eyes, wide and accusing, from his recent dream.

Sam takes a sudden, shuddering breath and shoves the images to the back of his mind, buries them beneath mental maps of the states they’ll be traveling through tomorrow, the lists of “what next” steps to take. The images aren’t gone. They'll never be gone. He can't let things go. That's why he's in this mess to begin with.

Burying his face in the shower stream, he reaches for the thin, plastic-feeling hotel soap he’d set on the shower shelf, blinks his eyes open in surprise when his fingers close around a spongy material that disintegrates as he pulls it through the water.

He rubs his fingers together, brings them to his nose, his mouth and makes a noise—part confusion, part half-hysterical laughter—as he watches pieces of angel food cake vanish down the drain.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel has an epiphany.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked this over before posting, but I spent most of my Saturday painting a closet (and I still have another one to go) and the fumes may have gotten to me, so forgive me any errors. 
> 
> Enjoy the Gabriel-full chapter. And the guest star appearance of another angel.

* * *

_What you did to me made me  
See myself something different_

“Oh Well,” – Fiona Apple

* * *

 

 

Padding naked through his house, Gabriel wonders what impact his death may have had on the wards on his home. It’s a different kind of magic than what’s on his body, rendering the place both unplottable and unreachable. Or it had…. The hum beneath his skin grows as he reaches his front door and notes that, at least, the “no trespassing” wards still seem to be functioning, otherwise his visitor could have just come right in.

Opening the door, he's confronted with the last person he expected to see.

“Resurrected again?” Kali stands on his door step, draped in a red and gold dress that makes her dark skin glow. Her hair flows loose around her face. Her eyes give away nothing.

“With no thanks to you. Unlike when you killed me, this time I actually did _die_.”

“And where do you think _She_ got your blood?”

“Which,” Gabriel bites out the words, “She wouldn't have needed if the Pagan Unified Front hadn't decided to kamikaze my brother.”

Kali blinks. “May I come in?”

“Are you carrying any sharp objects?”

She holds her hands out, fingers splayed. Gabriel stands aside, nudging the wards to open and flow around Kali. She steps into the room with a shiver and shuts the door, looking at him expectantly. He considers her for a moment, then turns and retreats to his bedroom, lighting the room with a wave of his hand as he moves into his closet.

“Still living like a mortal,” Kali says, sitting delicately on the edge of the bed.

He leans against the closet door, having slipped into jeans and a button-down shirt. “Are you here just to comment on my life choices? Because there are certainly more deserving ones to dissect than my living arrangements.”

“All too true,” she says, smoothing the blankets with her palm, nudging a pillow into place. The picture is one of a strange sort of domesticity. Strange because that has never been part of their life together. Their past is swathed in shades of death and destruction.

Gabriel remembers the first time he saw her, at one of the roadside shrines her followers had constructed, in the middle of a moonless night, slick with blood that made her thin tunic cling to her long-limbed body. At her feet, a man Gabriel had seen beating a young girl earlier in the evening. His chest was cracked open, the cage of his ribs bowing out, stark white and black. From it, Kali removed his heart, raised it to her lips and smiled at Gabriel as he hung back in the darkness.

In hindsight, the image of her with a heart in her hands should've been his first clue to how things would end between them.

“Why are you here?” he asks, suddenly feeling tired all over again. A few hours recharge is normally enough. But then, he’s never been resurrected before.

“Curiosity. You've been given a second chance. I wondered what you'd do with it.” She stares at him. Into him. Apart from the Loki-disguise, she could always read him too easily and now his identity and his secrets are laid bare. Her mouth twitches and she makes a soft sound of recognition. “You always were a fool for a pretty pair of eyes, weren't you?”

Gabriel shoves his feet into boots. “I'm not doing this for him.”

Kali makes a disbelieving sound. “And what is it…that you're doing?”

“Right now? I'm going to go check on Fox.”

“And then?”

Gabriel laces his boots with a snap of his fingers. “…I'll wing it.”

“I'm pretty sure,” she says, rising from the bed, “that’s what got you killed last time.”

“I'm pretty sure I had help.”

“I won't apologize.”

He scoffs. “I wouldn't expect you to.”

She draws close, heading tilting, as if she's memorizing his face. “I will say goodbye. This time.”

“That…might be a good idea. The fate of the world is in hunters’ hands.”

Kali clasps his face in her palms, thumbs stroking the soft hair at his temples. The warmth of her lips is a surprise, but she's gone before he can collect himself enough to respond. The taste of her and the texture of his real name—not that of the pagan god he'd pretended to be—linger against his mouth.

Alone, in the stillness of his bedroom, he stares at the towel he dropped on the floor earlier, his soft bed, the sky spread across his ceiling in its endless cascade of night into day. Part of him really wants to curl up under that sky, with a few choice playmates—maybe even some old flings—and ring in the end of the world good and proper.

Instead, he ensures his wards have settled back in place and, with a thought, slips in between time and space, taking to the sky.

 

**~#~#~#~**

 

Gabriel’s landing is smoother than he expected. He stays fully upright this time but manages to be off his target, across the street, in the middle of a flower bed. A cluster of blue irises lie crushed under his feet, their sweet smell assaulting his nose, making him want to sneeze. With a sigh, he steps gingerly around the blooms that aren’t crushed and crosses the street of the Television-trope human neighborhood, full of well-manicured lawns, mid-priced automobiles with decals of stick-figure families on their rear windows, and houses just different enough to not be labeled cookie-cutter. A suburban nightmare. When he’d first come to the Leave it to Beaver-esque digs, years before, while answering a summoning spell, he thought he’d stumbled into the wrong neighborhood. That was before he’d looked closer at the quaint little bungalow to which his attention had been called.

At first glance, the house appears no different from the others on the street, unless you knew how to let your eyes unfocus just so, revealing the fine sigils carved into the frame of the oak door, the basil planted on either side of the front step, the protection charms—sold as little baubles in home décor shops and useless unless you knew to bathe them in essence of acacia before laying them in the sun—hanging in the windows and, to Gabriel’s eyes, shining like mini supernovas. The protection charms are new. Gabriel approves. They can’t bar him entrance, nor could they stop other demi-gods or high powered nasties, but for most things, they’d at least provide some warning.

He knocks on the door, takes another moment to look around the quiet street, breathing in the scent of basil, the sweetness of lavender on the wind, feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin, hearing the tinkling of nearby wind chimes. In the blink of an eye, it all disappears, replaced by a landscape that’s tattered and torn, a vision of what might come. Trees have taken over the once pristine yards, their massive root systems erupting through driveways and roads; the sky hangs low and grey, shimmering at the edges, red and gold, like it’s on fire. And the people who survive? Most are mindless and violent, roaming in packs while those who aren’t slip through the world like wraiths, possessed by that indomitable will to survive until even that, at last, fades away and the earth is left scorched and barren.

“Loki?” Zoe King stares, holds the door half open, head cocked to one side, eyes keen. “See something interesting?”

Much like her house, at first glance Zoe King is average in every way; average height, plain brown hair worn long, dark eyes. But there’s a particular cleverness to her face, a mischievousness in her smile, that Gabriel had liked instantly, though it had taken some time to appear on their first meeting, as she’d been extraordinarily unimpressed with his entrance to her home, all flash and spectacle that worked on most humans who summoned him. She wasn’t interested in, as she said, “a display of phenomenal cosmic powers.” She wanted results. If he could deliver, then she’d be impressed.

Over the last month, she’d been getting a sudden influx of dogs coming to her clinic with injuries, some fatal. The police had dismissed her concerns. What else to do but take her concerns to someone who _would_ listen?

The ring hadn’t been very large…or well run. A handful of yokels who’d gotten it in their heads that it’d be more fun to gamble on dog fights than to keep investing in scratch and win tickets. They didn’t find being turned into dogs as much fun. (As much as Gabriel would like to take credit for that idea. Zoe herself had suggested—not knowing what was possible—the ring leaders get a taste of their own medicine). They liked the three-headed dog Gabriel had set on them inside their own plywood ring even less. At the end of it all, Zoe had shaken his hand, like they’d just completed a business deal. And then she threw in a little something furry to sweeten the pot.

Gabriel ignores her question. “Did he miss me?”

Zoe follows his lead. “You’re late.”  
  
“Unavoidably detained.”

She gives him a once over, head to toe and back again. Her gaze lingers on his chest for a moment, as if she can see through the button-down shirt, through the healed skin, before meeting his eyes. “Got a chunk taken out of you, huh? In more ways than one?”

Always too perceptive, these witches.

“Can I come in or are guests relegated to your doorstep these days?”

“He missed you,” Zoe finally says, stepping aside and pulling the door wider. From somewhere in the house, Gabriel hears the scrabbling of nails, an excited bark.

Gabriel shuts the door and followers her down a long hall that ends in a sunroom, its door blocked by an extra tall doggy gate. Bouncing behind the gate, with almost enough clearance to clear it, is Fox.

As he draws close, Zoe opens the gate and the Jack Russel wiggles his hind quarters, not unlike a cat, and launches himself at Gabriel. For a moment, Gabriel loses himself in the simple doggy affection of squirming muscles, smooth fur, and a wet tongue that seems determined to lick the skin off his face.

Zoe disappears. By the time she comes back with a pot of tea, two mugs, and a package of cookies under one arm, Fox has heralded Gabriel with his many adventures chasing squirrels, and the occasional field mouse, through Zoe’s backyard; his trip to the office for a bath and to have his nails clipped; and visits to the dog park, complete with a lot of tail chasing (his own and other dogs). He’s now settled on the couch, with his head on Gabriel’s thigh.

“He’s really enjoyed his time with you.” Gabriel takes the offered cup.

“He tell you that?” Zoe pours a tea that smells like a blend of lavender and honeysuckle.

“I speak dog.”

There’s a pregnant pause and she narrows her eyes at him. “That’s too easy. I’m not touching it.”

And Gabriel laughs. It feels good to release the weight that’s been sitting cold and heavy in that hollow space between his ribs and his belly. If he were human, his eyes would be watering by now and he takes a breath to steady himself.

“You’re different,” Zoe says, sitting in the armchair next to the couch, mug of tea under her nose. The look she gives him is sharp as a scythe, examining. And, for just a moment, Gabriel wonders what she sees. He’s never met a human—witch or otherwise—who could read him like Zoe… Zoe, who had inexplicably summoned him again after the dog fighting business was concluded, only to invite him to a Saturday dinner. Just her and him and Fox, an unexpected and haphazard family to replace the one he’d lost. She wasn’t aware of who or what he really was, but every now and then he wondered how far she was from discovering it. And now he wondered if the world would be around long enough for her to get there.

“I’m not sure…” she says, interrupting his thoughts. She leans across the couch arm, reaching for him, lays warm fingers against his collar bone.

“Got a few new wounds,” he says. “I’d show you the scars, but, you know…”

“No,” she says, settling back into her chair, frowning. “These are old wounds. Re-opened. Family?”

Gabriel blinks.

“Ah,” Zoe says and has the grace to look abashed. “I know you don’t like to talk about that.” She takes a sip of tea. “But there’s something else too,” she presses on, abashment ignored, as Gabriel’s come to expect. “It’s like…you found a piece of yourself.”  
  
Gabriel cocks his head and Zoe changes the subject. They talk of other things. Things of no large consequence. Fox. The litter of kittens the mascot at her office had birthed a few weeks before. The new wards she’d set up. The last date she’d been on. She pours them more tea and he bites into a lemon cookie and a wave of pain washes over him as the flavor of lemon floods his tongue, an acrid accompaniment to the sour-sweet. Sam, somewhere, is having a hell of a time, wrestling with self-loathing, with anger, simultaneously muted and enhanced by what Gabriel knows to be the warm lull of alcohol. Scotch, if he’s not mistaken. And he’s feeding Gabriel those emotions in heaping spoonfuls until Gabriel gathers himself and clamps down on their link, pinching it like a garden hose. With Kali’s visit he’d forgotten to close the link…. Maybe that was a good thing, to be reminded of just how strong a connection with a human in his charge could be, the mélange of emotion that could be transferred.

He shoves the rest of the cookie in his mouth and swallows, turning back to Zoe, missing what she’d said.

“Still can’t tell me why you had to disappear for almost two weeks?”

“Would you believe ‘to stop the end of the world’?”

She sits up straighter in her chair and Gabriel hears her breath hitch. Reaching for the remote, she turns on the little television in the corner of the room, mutes it and flips through local news channels showing stories of forest fires in Colorado, a massive storm off the coast of California, locusts destroying crops on a farm in Kansas. She sits back in her chair again, remote on the arm rest and says: “One of those kittens I told you about? It was born with two heads. The grocery store here had a shortage of milk because the last batch soured between farm and factory. So…I think the answer to that is yes.”

“Well,” Gabriel says, eating another cookie. “Don’t go getting too excited. Things didn’t go to plan and the Apocalypse is still a go.”

A glance at the television and then back to him and Zoe says, “No shit.”

“Stars aligning,” Gabriel continues, hefting himself off the couch to look out over the expanse of Zoe’s backyard, the garden frothy with green leaves, large shade trees. “Strings being pulled left and right, and the only thing between this world and destruction is a couple of _self-sacrificing—_ ” he stops. _It’s like you found a piece of yourself. There’s still enough of me in you to find you when I need to_. The shimmer of stars…the phosphorous flicker in the deep. A piece of himself.

“Have I,” Gabriel says, turning to her and feeling the beginnings of a smile at the corners of his mouth, “ever told you that you give me the greatest ideas?”

Shrugging delicately, she says “yes,” and then looks closer at him, eyes narrowed. “And maybe that should scare me…”

He huffs a laugh, but his mind is already far away, rifling through old memories, conversations, and he needs to double check some things before he can put his thoughts into action.

“Would you keep Fox for a few more days?”   
  
“That depends. Are you coming back for him?”

“If I don’t,” he says, somber again, “someone will. I promise.”

She studies him, apparently can’t find an issue, or at least not enough of one to make a fuss about it. “Okay. You want to give me a time table? Or at least tell me where you’re going?”

“I need to see a man about a book.”

**~#~#~#~**  
  


In hindsight, the trip across the pond was probably not the best idea, given his current low power state. At the halfway point, he has to hitch a ride with an airliner, positioning himself in the top center of the craft. As much as he might like to, now wasn’t the time to play “there’s something on the wing” with the passengers. After the short break (okay, maybe it was a little longer than he’d like to admit), it’s easy enough to make the final flight to Soho.

The bookshop is dark when he arrives, the shades pulled, the door locked. He lets himself in anyway. Inside is dim, dusty and full of the scent of old crackling paper, the faintly sour odor of leather bindings. He makes it a point to close the door loudly behind him, just to hear the muted grumbling and muffled cursing about people showing up in the dead of night to buy books.

The grumbling figure, clad in a burgundy smoking jacket, useless glasses perched on his nose, shuffles in from a back room, wafting with him the delicate flower scent of tea, the sharper smell of whiskey. When he sees Gabriel, he blinks once, twice, opens and closes his mouth and finally says, “Well, I didn’t expect to be seeing you again.”

“Bad penny.” Gabriel grins. “And the bad penny needs a book.”

The only other angel Gabriel has seen look this constipated over a relatively simple request is Castiel. The family resemblance is striking.   
  
“Come in, then.”

“That’s my Azi,” Gabriel says, clapping him on the shoulder before heading straight for the kitchenette. Last time he was here, he’d discovered a really great stock of Ardbeg Airigh Nam Beist.

“Don’t call me that,” his brother says, locking the door and following him into the gloom.

Sometime later, Azi has gone from looking constipated to looking both constipated and pissed off as Gabriel’s detailed the whole end-of-the-world plan and the Heavenly puppetry that has been helping it come to pass. He finishes the whiskey in his glass, rises, and disappears into the shadows of his shop, coming back quickly with a small, ancient book under his arm that he hands off to Gabriel.   
  
“It’s all in there. What you’re thinking.” He pauses. “I assume you know what you’re doing.”

“Well…” Gabriel says.

Azi takes off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose and takes the book back. “We’ll go over it. Maybe you should make notes,” he says, fishing a spiral notepad out from beneath a tea cup.

“Is this your way of making sure I know what I’m doing or of keeping me from taking the book?”

“Yes,” Azi says, turning the book’s pages with the deftness of a surgeon.

Huffing softly, Gabriel sips his hot chocolate, generously imbued with scotch, and reaches for a piece of the angel food cake Azi has sitting on the counter. It’s one of the sweets his brother always keeps around, at first because the name amused him and then because he, like Gabriel, had grown to love the taste. The fluffy cake sticks to Gabriel’s fingertips, melts in his mouth and he closes his eyes, savors.  
  
There’s a little twinge to the muted connection with Sam and Gabriel wonders, for a moment, why it always seems to come when he’s indulging his sweet tooth, before he carefully expands the link and finds Sam grieving. It’s a different flavor than his despair and anger, sweet and salty. He’s surrounded by heat and water and a miasma of sadness that has Gabriel reaching through the link to offer what bit of comfort he can.

He hadn’t entirely intended to transform the soap into comfort food, but the feeling of Sam’s laughter, choked yet effervescent, across the link makes the end result worthwhile.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets mad. Sam casts a spell. Gabriel reveals a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're approaching the climax. (Gabriel's laughing in my ear at that turn of phrase.)

* * *

_Everything you are is everything I'm not_  
Night and day, light and dark  
Everything I need is everything you've got

“Hate and Love,” Jack Savoretti featuring Sienna Miller **  
**

* * *

 

 

The battle with Pestilence turns out to be pretty anticlimactic, Sam thinks. At least as far as their experience dealing with the Horsemen has gone. On his personal scale he rates it third out of seeing Cas gorge himself on raw meat and watching Jo’s eyes turn black. And Jo…that’s not a topic he wants to visit at the moment, so he turns his attention back to the car and its occupants.

Dean’s not talking much, but his hands are loose on the wheel and he has the music—some 80s and 90s mix station, the only thing they were picking up—playing at an acceptable volume. Sam’s pretty sure Cas’s quiet presence in the back seat can be thanked for that. If it were just Sam and Dean, there would be more white-knuckling of the steering wheel and music loud enough that Sam would be forced to roll down a window to let the bass out into the night air, as they rehashed parts of their earlier argument, standing in Bobby’s kitchen.

_“_ _I’m telling you, he’s alive. How else do you explain the angel food soap?”_

_“_ _I don’t, okay?” says Dean, filling a mug with coffee and pouring a liberal dose of whiskey into it. “Any more than I can explain that DVD.”_

_The DVD in question is currently at the bottom of Sam’s duffel bag, buried beneath a pair of socks. He’d considered throwing it out, but could never quite bring himself to do so. Maybe because it gave him something to hang on to. Some hope that things would—inexorably—turn out all right._

_He’s been quiet too long. Dean’s studying his face with the expression normally reserved for examining reports of supernatural weirdness. “Why are you so stuck on this?”_

_And Sam, as he’s been doing too much lately, doesn’t think. “Because maybe…maybe it means there’s still a chance. Maybe I won’t have to say ‘yes’ to Lucifer. Or maybe, if I do—”_

_“_ **_What_ ** _? Say ‘yes’ to Lucifer?”_

_The floorboards in the library creak, along with the leather of Bobby’s wheelchair. If he could, Sam was sure Bobby would’ve slipped away as fast as his legs could move._

_“_ _It was just an idea, Dean. When… Bobby took back control of his body when that demon possessed him. Why couldn’t I do the same?”_

_“_ _Why?” Dean says. “Why? Because it’s freaking Lucifer, man! Not some punk ass demon. I—”  He slams his mug on the table, rises to round on Bobby through the door of the library. “Did you know about this?”_

_Bobby’s expression is carefully blank, which must tell Dean what he wants to know because he turns back to Sam, aggrieved and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out._

_“_ _I know. But, Dean, how else are we going to get him back in the box?”_

_It was the question no one wanted to ask because no one wanted to answer it. And Sam was saved by the proverbial bell after he let it out, with Cas phoning in from a hospital in Louisiana._

And the angel-cum-human is looking pretty good for someone who survived the effects of a banishing sigil, travel by plane then Greyhound bus, and a brush with typhoid fever (and God knew what else).  
  
“Sure you’re okay, Cas?” Sam says, handing an unopened bottle of water over his shoulder.

“Yes, Sam.” He takes the bottle, finger tips touching Sam’s, and he cocks his head. His eyes don’t narrow the way they do when he’s trying to understand some strange human custom, but the gaze is analytical all the same. “And you, Sam?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

Dean huffs softly. Cas continues to stare at him with intense blue eyes and Sam faces front, certain the angel can see every thought and impulse he’s had in the last two weeks, etched across his face.

~*~*~*~  


The reprieve they were expecting on returning to Bobby’s with Pestilence’s ring (cleaned heavily after its removal from his person) is short lived, made so by a few more revelations than Sam would like to have had in such a short time.

The news that Chicago’s about to be wiped off the map by the remnants of Hurricane Jacob, with Death following close behind to do the cleanup, is nearly overshadowed by the news that Bobby’s given up his soul for the information. Sam thinks the vein in Dean’s forehead might actually rupture when Crowley shows up to crow about the contract, in addition to providing some additional intel on the Croatoan virus, which is about to hit the market and make _Zombieland_ look like a documentary on Paradise.

It doesn’t take long to decide it’ll have to be divide and conquer, with Sam, Bobby and Cas tackling the zombie threat while Dean…kills Death. Sam doesn’t like the idea of leaving his brother alone, with only Crowley as back up, to face down the ultimate bogeyman. But with Sam’s track record of late, he feels better going after something he _knows_ he can fight. Dean’s always been better at managing the hopeless cases.

The group breaks up shortly after, with Crowley popping off with vague mention of finding a “weapon appropriate to kill something of Death’s caliber,” and Dean heading for Baby, muttering something about an oil change. Cas stays with Bobby, silently watching the man wheeling around the library, placing books on shelves, papers where they belong. A frown lingers on the angel’s face, maybe guilt, or maybe concern, Sam’s not sure.

He leaves Bobby to his straightening, Cas to his staring, and retreats to the guest bedroom to sort through the clothes in his duffle. They’ve been on the road more than off lately and things are starting to stink. He might as well take advantage of Bobby’s washer and dryer. If he dies over the next few days, at least he’ll go smelling like Tide Coldwater Clean instead of someone who could give a gym locker a run for its money.

A pair of underwear passes the sniff test, goes back in the bag, tucked in a corner. A pair of socks does not and gets tossed over his shoulder into the growing pile. From the depths of his duffle, brown eyes gaze up at him from the cover of Casa Erotica 13. Sam stares at the clashing gold-on-red cover art, the flat, trying-to-be-sultry gaze of the actress, the plate of bratwurst she’s holding up. He remembers the sticky sweet cake falling apart on him in the shower and then he’s up and moving, laundry in his arms, a particular book title in his mind.

After dropping the laundry in the basement, he heads to Bobby’s old bedroom, scours the lone bookshelf, examining the titles lying beneath a healthy layer of dust. This room, being on the second floor, hasn’t seen a lot of use lately. And neither have the books. They’re mostly old grimoires handed off from other hunters or picked up at suspect, moldering shops. Books on spell craft, raising the dead, summoning gods.

It’s the last that Sam’s interested in. Gabriel’s as much god as archangel, at least from what Sam’s gleaned of his history with Kali and the others. And, okay, he’s not sure exactly how that works…but it’s worth a shot. And he’s fairly certain he saw a spell in the book, years before, about summoning trickster gods in particular. At this point, he’ll try anything.

But anything will have to wait until later. From downstairs, he hears Dean clomping through the hall, the sound of Bobby’s chair wheels rolling, the slide of magazines being checked, the clink of weapons in a duffle. He drops the book in his room, in the backpack he’s been keeping stashed here for the last little while and tucks the DVD in with it before heading downstairs to gear up for preventing the zombie apocalypse.

 

~*~*~*~  


“Something on your mind, Cas?” Sam asks when he catches the angel peering at him for the third time in the last hour. In the driver’s seat, Bobby glances in the rearview mirror, then at Sam, before shifting gears and slipping through a traffic light just before it turns red, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he taps the brake to slow to the speed limit. It makes Sam want to laugh. He knows there's probably a reason Crowley gave Bobby back his legs – other than helping to defeat Lucifer and save Crowley's own ass – but at the moment, he's happy to ignore that pendulum hanging over their heads.

“You seem resigned,” Cas says, tone questioning with a touch of concern perhaps, but mostly observant, unjudging.

Sam laughs. It comes out more as a choked cough. “I think,” he says, “maybe I am. Maybe I have to be.” And then he's telling Cas the plan that had hatched in his mind several nights ago after too much of Crowley's scotch and too much remembering.

He's not sure what he expects. For Cas to get upset like Dean or hit him with hard truths like Bobby. When the angel commends him on the plan, Sam stares out at the darkened road, gobsmacked.

Then Cas goes and ruins the moment.

“Of course, it will take a lot of demon blood to see it accomplished,” he says. “Finding him will be the easiest part, with your link.”

“It'll happen in Detroit,” Sam murmurs, then pauses. “Wait. You know about the link?”

“Yes.” Cas squints. “Angels have links to humans in their charge, including vessels,” Cas says as if they were discussing the fact that the sky was blue. He cocks his head at Sam's flustered look. “That's why the sigils I burned into your ribs were so important. I knew it wouldn't stop the dreams, might not even keep Lucifer or Michael at bay forever, but it would help.” He pauses. “Your link is particularly strong.”

“Strong enough to let me sense demons…”

Cas nods.

“Cas, in the future,” Bobby says, obviously having been hanging on every word, “file that kind of information under ‘need to know’ and fill us in, okay?” His voice is light, but his fingers tap on the wheel in agitation.

“Of course,” Cas says.

Sam snorts softly.

Cas shifts in the backseat.  “I suppose now would be the time to tell you that Michael has taken his vessel.”

“ _What_?” Bobby says.

“Your brother,” he says to Sam. “Adam. He may not be strong enough to withstand the onslaught of Lucifer, especially in a secondary vessel, but Michael's willing to take that chance.”

The car falls into silence, save for the rev of the engine, the low drone of the radio. They don't speak much more until they reach Niveus, just as the sun's coming over the horizon and then it's only to go over their plan of attack one last time.

~*~*~*~

At the warehouse, it feels good to finally be doing something familiar, Sam thinks as he leads people to safety, as he takes out more than his fair share of Croatoan infected warehouse workers. Only one other time had Sam felt at such loose ends, back when John had him attend a summer camp in order to get intel on the werewolf that was working there. Three days of camp activities had nothing on a near week of sitting on his ass, doing research that wasn't leading anywhere.  
  
And maybe that's why it's so important to save as many people as he can.

And maybe...because this might be his last chance to save anyone.

 

~*~*~*~

They beat Dean back to Bobby's, but he calls them from the road, gives them a rundown on Death, the Cage, the key. No one says anything about Sam's plan, but it hangs in the air, the ubiquitous sword of Damocles.

After Dean hangs up, the three of them seek their own space: Bobby retreats to the library, Cas wanders outside, disappears among the decaying remains of cars, and Sam slips away to the kitchen before retreating to his room, taking with him a small cast iron pot and several sachets of herbs.

The instructions in the book are strangely straightforward and in no time, the dimly lit room is filled with the sound of crackling herbs, the scent of burning blood and pungent mugwort, and the sharp green odor of mistletoe that makes the entire room smell like a forest glade.

There are no words in the summoning. It's based entirely on intent and Sam clears everything from his mind, focusing on the tacky DVD cover. It's like making a wish.

There's a sudden flare of light, bright as the sun, that leaves him blinking at the dark figure taking shape in its center. It's human-shaped but for the strange shadows arcing over it, filling the room.

The light flares brighter, hotter, the room filling with the presence of magic, of something teeth-achingly old. Sam half expects a voice to boom out of that light, God speaking to Moses on top of Mount Sinai. Instead, a familiar, nasal, and overwhelmingly welcome voice says “I'm surprised, Sammy. That invocation's usually used by maidens ready to doff their virginity.”

When the light fades, Gabriel's standing before him, looking much like he did the last time Sam saw him. But maybe there's a little fatigue around the eyes, the corners of his mouth turned up in that near ever present smirk.

“I knew it,” Sam says.

“I hoped you'd catch on quicker than your knucklehead brother.”

“Maybe if he'd seen the soap,” Sam deadpans. “What was with the angel food cake anyway?”

“I was having a moment.”

“And, uh, during that moment did you happen to have any brilliant ideas to the problem of the Apocalypse?”

Gabriel grins and, for a split second, it's all teeth and ageless eyes and Sam remembers that the creature in front of him, crammed into this short and slight human body, is older than he can reckon, larger than anything he's ever seen.

“With a little help from one of my grumpy brothers who, I'm convinced, Cas is trying to live up to. Sammy... How do you feel about having a little angel inside you?”

Sam blinks, opens his mouth and lets out a breath, blinks again. “You told me _not_ to say yes to Lucifer.”

“That might have been a little premature.”

“What the fuck?”

Sam turns at the voice. Gabriel remains where he is, perched on the edge of the bed, watching Sam. Dean stands in the doorway, looking like he doesn't know whether to snap at Sam or throw something sharp at the archangel.  
  
“How the hell are you here? What are you doing here?” Dean says, shooting Sam a look.  
  
“Hello to you, too, Deano. Let's just say I have connections. As to the other question…are you not interested in stopping the Apocalypse?”

An hour later, they're all downstairs, Gabriel having only wanted to explain his plan once.  It had gone over about as well as he expected. Somber acceptance from Sam, a skeptical but intrigued response from Bobby; and from Dean, a rather subtle outrage at the method, tempered by disbelief that it would lead anywhere good, followed by a statement of needing a drink in which he stalked off to the kitchen, returning with three glasses and a bottle of whiskey.  
  
But it's Sam's acceptance that he's interested in. Sam, who stands, leaning against the bookshelf, staring into his empty glass, as much on the outskirts of the conversation as he can be. He's rolling the idea through his head once more, examining it. A sliver of Gabriel's grace inside him. Something to lean on when he faces Lucifer, to draw strength from because he, despite his bravado, is convinced that he doesn't have enough. He pictures it, Gabriel realizes, like celestial spackle. Something to patch up the tears and tatters he imagines he's put in his soul these last few years, fighting with Dean, putting his trust in the tainted blood of a demon.

He's not sure such a thing will work for him. He's not sure he deserves it.

Gabriel straightens on his perch, resists the urge to shake his head to cast off Sam's low thoughts like rain water. Instead, he turns to Dean, who's making a constipated face. Gabriel thinks he must be spending too much time with Cas.

“So,” Dean says, “there's going to be some kind of angelic orgy going on inside my brother?”

Sam makes a garbled noise that Gabriel ignores, in favor of fixing Dean with a very, he's been told, unnerving stare. 

“Not even close, Deano. If I wanted an orgy with your brother, it would involve a lot less metaphysical touch and a lot more hands, fingers, tongues and other parts.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Also, Luci wouldn't be invited.”

Dean looks vaguely sick.

Bobby breaks the silence. “Why can't _you_ shank Lucifer?”

“’Cause that worked out so well last time. And I'm not back up to full power yet.”

“You, ah... When do we do this?” Sam says, voice steady, but Gabriel can hear the underlying nerves.

“No time like the present.” Gabriel stands, stretches and turns his head toward the kitchen as the presence of a familiar demon skitters across his senses and the space in the kitchen doorway is suddenly filled with a figure dressed in black. 

“Word on the street is that Lucifer's holed up in an abandoned hotel in Detroit,” Crowley says, strolling into the library, a glass of scotch in one hand. He stops dead when he spies Gabriel.

“It's getting crowded in here,” Dean grumbles.

“Hiya, Crowley. Turning over a new leaf? Azi sends his regards, by the way.”

“H-how is the old chap? Still silent and surly?”

“As ever.” Gabriel turns to the group. “So, Detroit.” He looks at Sam. “You ready?”

Sam nods and turns, heading up the stairs.

Gabriel follows, calling over his shoulder, “And Crowley, we'll be having a chat later about Bobby Singer’s soul.”

There's a clink of glass and Crowley's gone in a rush of sulphur scented wind. Bobby huffs out a laugh.

Before he reaches the bottom of the stairs, Cas is in his face. “Gabriel, I—” He looks like he's rethinking what he wants to say, finally settles. “I'm glad you're alive.”

“You're making me tear up.” Gabriel pats his brother on the cheek and jerks his head toward the library. “Now, go keep Dean distracted while I debauch his baby brother.”

“Gabriel.” Cas's voice is admonishing, but there's a hint of amusement in it. Spending time on Earth seems to have done him some good.

Back in the upstairs bedroom, Gabriel finds Sam sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his thighs, hands clasped between his knees, staring at the wall, looking for answers in the chips on the wood paneling.

“You ready, kiddo?”

“Not really,” he says. “But time’s running out.”

“You don’t have to do this. Any of this,” Gabriel says and is half surprised to find he means it. Somewhere along the lines, it seems he’s not come to terms with the end of the world, but accepted that it’s very much a possibility. His little stint with nonexistence might be to thank for that.

“Yes,” Sam says, “I do.”

“Then I need your permission, Sam.”  
  
“You have it.”

“You might wanna lie down for this,” Gabriel says and Sam stares at him for a moment before snorting softly and reclining on the bed.

Gabriel’s next to him so fast that Sam blinks, startled. He has a glass vial in one hand, gleaming red inside.

“Is that—“ Sam starts.

“The blood Kali stole from you and your brother. Yep. Already got rid of Deano’s. So no worries about it being used against him. And yours…” He snaps the vial between his fingers. The glass cuts into his hand. Sam’s blood, thick and sticky, mingles with Gabriel’s fresh blood.

Gabriel slips the bloody hand beneath the collar of Sam’s shirt, above the steady beat of the heart inside its boney cage. The other, he places atop Sam’s head. The two seats of the soul, working in tandem, one incomplete without the other.

Sam’s body heats languorously, beginning with the space over his heart, and breathes out Gabriel’s name and Gabriel slips inside.

Sex, Sam thinks, despite not wanting to. But sex is the nearest and furthest thing he can compare this to. Not the quick, meaningless fucks to work off the horniness that builds up on the road, or the rough one-night tumbles to work off steam after a case goes awry. No. More like what he’d had with Jess, with someone who loved him, who knew him.

And that’s where the comparison really ends, because no one else has split him open like this, no one else has traveled the length and breadth of his insides, has been able to see into the dark nooks of his mind. And never has he felt, in his mind, slipping between his bones, into the nuclei in the center of his cells, something so old and endless, so cold and warm, so achingly strange and beautiful.

“Aw, Sam.” Gabriel’s voice floats around him. “I’m flattered.”

And then the world falls out from under Sam. The angel overwhelms his senses, encompasses his entire being and there is nothing but warmth and light, the smell of thunderstorms and wet earth. And beneath the petrichor, the scent of chocolate, rich and dark.

 

**~*~*~*~**

 

The exchange invigorates Sam and leaves Gabriel feeling like he's come back from being only half-dead this time, much as Azi said it would. He doesn't so much walk down the stairs as ooze down them and out onto the porch. He sits on the stoop, watching as Sam loads empty gallon milk and water jugs into the trunk of the Impala, preparing for the hunting they'll have to do between here and Detroit.

None of them are happy. None of them are particularly hopeful. But they are all, somehow, Gabriel thinks, content. Even here, at the possible end of all things.

“You're not coming,” Dean says, appearing on the step above him, bag slung over his shoulder.

“It's not my show,” Gabriel says. “It's yours. I can't prevent what's coming. Tried that. Failed spectacularly on account of Mr. Puppy Eyes over there,” Gabriel mutters. “But...with this, maybe I can still affect the outcome.”

“Yeah,” Dean says as he walks away. “Well, we'll see, won't we?”

Gabriel tilts his head, shrugs.

Sam shoves the last jug into the trunk, comes over to the porch. He looks like he wants to say something, thinks better of it. Gabriel waits. Then, low and for their ears only, Sam asks, “Do you think I can do this?”

“There's no one else I'd bet on, kiddo.”

Gabriel watches the Impala disappear around the bend, then wings to the top of Bobby's house, settling on the roof, legs splayed out in front of him, face turned toward the setting sun. The horizon is a flame of reds and violets, the brightest shade of orange. He wonders if real flame will mimic the sunset in a few days time.

He wonders what his brothers and sisters are doing, listens through the ever widening cracks in his shields, but can only hear muffled chatter, an undercurrent of worry. For what is. For what's to come. For what might be. It seems Michael doesn't have quite the backing he thinks he does. Not that it'll make a difference. Gabriel loves his siblings, but they are cut from the same cloth. They will obey. Despite their good sense.

He wonders what She is doing.

_Looking for a stubborn old ass…_

The words are murmured, as if in his ear, filling his head with Her wit and warmth and he laughs. Briefly.

Then he turns his face to the sun again, closes his eyes, breathes out and stills. He lets the warmth wash over his face, flow beneath his skin, sink into the meat of muscle, the marrow of bone, lets it nourish him. When the moon and the stars rise, he takes what they have to give. He sits on the roof through the entire next day, eyes closed, grace exposed to the elements, recharging like a battery, the strangest weather vane the birds in these parts have ever seen.

That second evening, he feels the cosmos shift as Lucifer takes his vessel and he breathes out a shuddering breath as he watches the sun set, red on the horizon.

Gabriel's downstairs when Dean, Bobby and Cas return. He feels the anger flowing off of Dean, the despair, the guilt. He is his brother's keeper.

Dean stalks into the kitchen, grabs Gabriel by the jacket and shoves him against the wall, doesn't stop to think that the angel is allowing this to happen. Allowing Dean's rage to wash over him.

“He took him. That bastard's out there, wearing Sammy like a suit. And you—you just let him walk right into this. You—”  
All at once the fight seems to seep out of Dean and he lets go of Gabriel's collar. Gabriel slides down the wall to land on his feet. Dean's still glaring at him, eyes shiny, red at the edges, vein in his temple prominent, mouth open, then shut, then open, unable to form words past the grief.

“Dean,” Gabriel says, and he puts into his voice a warmth and inflection, a hallowed timbre that he hasn't used since the beginning of his time on earth, “have faith in your brother.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Lucifer have a moment. Cas's thoughts betray him. Gabriel wasn't expecting that phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a little bit filler. But we get some Sam and Lucifer and even a bit of Destiel if you squint. 
> 
> Kudos sustain me. Comments give me new life. 
> 
> You can find me at [ilcuoreardendo-fic](http://ilcuoreardendo-fic.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.

* * *

_Wrap me in a bolt of lightning_  
Send me on my way still smiling  
Maybe that's the way I should go,  
Straight into the mouth of the unknown  
“Call Me,” Shinedown **  
**

* * *

 

_He's 13 years old and he's had another fight with Dad. Dean wasn't around to referee this time and instead of stomping off to his bedroom in the ratty little two bedroom they're squatting in, Sam stomps outside and away, into the late summer evening, the humid air rising up behind him like a wall._

_Three blocks down the road, he realizes he doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t even have his wallet with the few bucks he’s managed to save doing odd jobs in the last town they were in. He stands, for a moment, wondering if he should turn back, wondering whether Dad had invited over Jim and Beam to ease his mind from his fuck up of a son, wondering how long he’ll need to wait until he can pick the lock and slip through to his room, undetectable through the sweet, alcohol haze._

_A drop of rain hits the sidewalk, turns to steam almost before it can leave a mark, followed by another. The sky splits open, a peal of white light arcing through the clouds, followed by thunder so loud it makes his teeth rattle and Sam’s off and running through the first monsoon of the season, toward the only other place he can think to go.  
_

_The public library is open. An old woman pushes a mop across the wet floor just inside the doors, gives Sam the stink-eye as he stands there, dripping puddles._

_A trip to the bathroom, too many paper towels and improper use of the hand dryer and Sam’s more than damp but not wet enough to be a risk to the books._

_He’s spent a lot of time in libraries over the last few years. He can hide his sudden height among the stacks, lose himself in histories and fictions and the lore he loves to read even when there’s no mission, no need for research._

_Tonight, he finds a table that seems meant for him, stacked with leftover fantasy novels, thin spiritual guidance books, thick occult tomes, and a mishmash of other genres, and combs through them. He likes to see what other people have been reading. One of the books is on the Evolution of Erotic Art. He tucks away the title for later. Another is on the geological features of the Sonoran desert. Then he finds the one on angels._

_It’s the kind of thick tome one expects to find in a dusty attic or locked away in some eccentric’s trunk. Some of the images are familiar, from the artists he’s come to recognize and know just as well as the things they hunt._

_He pages through the celestial hierarchy, cherubim, seraphim and thrones; glosses over a chapter on guardians and finds himself at the early days of human time. There is Michael with his fiery sword, dark haired and cherub cheeked and locked in battle with an angel who looks part human, part serpent. Lucifer._

_Another page and he’s reading Lucifer’s story. God’s beloved son, who couldn’t stand being replaced by humans, who refused to bend to his father’s will and was kicked out of Heaven for it._

_The pages after show various artists’ take on Lucifer, from the twining green and black serpent in Eden to the androgynous young man with cheekbones sharper than a hunter’s blade and lips that look like they may have kissed, may have whispered sinful things into the ear of a pretty, young human._

_“Beautiful” isn’t a word 13 year old Sam would use to describe this rendition of Lucifer. But there’s something magnetic about him, something that draws Sam in, makes him turn the pages, wanting to see more, know more._

“Our first moment, Sam.” Lucifer’s voice is loud in his head. “Our first real connection. I’m so glad you remember it.”

Sam opens his eyes, closes them as bile pushes hot and sour at the back of his throat. Or is that the idea of bile, the memory? Because he doesn’t have a body, under his control, to produce bile. He’s locked inside his own head and when he opens his eyes, it’s like looking down a cascade of funhouse mirrors. A Lovecraftian funhouse of strange geometry where the reflective surfaces give him shards of the full picture. A hundred Sam faces, a million too-hazel eyes, the sharp, repeating curves of a smile that is not Sam’s, spread across the face that was once his.

Then the not-Sam blinks and everything goes black. When the light creeps back in there is one mirror and one Sam reflected in that mirror.

“Sorry,” Lucifer says. “I’ve heard that can be quite disconcerting.”

And he is sorry. About that, at least. Sam can taste the truth on his tongue, sharp and bittersweet.

Sam looks out through the windows of his body’s eyes. The room stretches beyond his vision, lit dimly red from a nearby lamp, black at the edges. He can make out the hulking, amorphous shapes of chairs, a table, perhaps a bed.

There’s a tickling sensation, ghostly faint, along his arm, like insect legs marching through the hairs. Lucifer’s running his fingertips along the length of Sam’s forearm. He repeats the move on the other arm, pressing more firmly. And again on the tops of Sam’s thighs, his belly and chest, the curve of his jaw. He makes soft noises of discovery at each new part and Sam thinks that might be awe written across his features.

“You are one of my Father’s most beautiful creations, Sam.” Lucifer traces a long finger across the seam of Sam’s lips, shudders at the sensation. Sam shudders too, more from the memory of the sensation that comes to him strangely muted now. “And made for me. You fit _perfectly_. The sensations of this world with Nick weren’t half as sharp, as strong.”

Lucifer licks his lips, meets his eyes in the mirror. “It’s a completion. A culmination of the momentous choices of your life, Sam. From that rebellious moment at 13, staring down at my image and empathizing with me, to the breaking away from your dad, to the moment you allowed yourself to follow Ruby’s lead.

“Oh, Sam. Your intentions have always been good,” Lucifer says, cupping his hand beneath his jaw. “You care. So much. So passionately. And you follow where it leads. How could you not be for me? How could I not love you? So unlike your father, your brother.”

Sam jolts at the memory of his family, of Dean. Shame, hot and bitter flooding his mouth. Another loss, another failure.

Of course, Lucifer feels this.

“No, Sam. I want you to be happy. I can make you happy. I can spare Dean. He doesn’t have to die with the rest. He can be saved.”

His words are true. Sam can feel it, wrapping around him like a soft blanket. Lucifer does love him. But it’s a strange, twisted affection. Not the love one has for a friend or lover. More possessive, darker. A prized possession it took years to steal.

“He’ll never,” Sam says, “never stop trying to kill you. He won’t submit.”

“If it means killing you too, Sam, there are many things he’d do. But that’s a later discussion. Right now, I have a gift for you.”

Lucifer rises, turns from the mirror and Sam is off balance again, stumbling inside his own head, his body in motion but him unable to control it, unable to predict what his muscles do next.

The next room is not as dimly lit. Sam can easily make out the figures, people, perched in the chairs. There are two guards, on at the far door and one at the door they entered through. Lucifer dismisses them with a regal wave of his hand.

Then they’re alone and Lucifer stills in the center of the room, says, “Do you recognize them, Sam?”

And Sam looks and forgets how to breathe.

They haven’t changed. None of them. They look exactly as they did when Sam knew them, a decade ago.

Mr. Calhoun, his 9th grade counselor, for a time. Sam had spent several long, early autumn afternoons in his office, talking about his plans for after high school, back before Sam really considered there was much out there for him besides following in Dad’s footsteps. Mr. Calhoun had thought otherwise.

There’s Mindy Parker, his prom date. She’d been a junior, he a sophomore. She’d walked right up to him in the cafeteria and asked him to the dance. She’d stayed at his side the whole evening and come midnight, had led him through the hotel lobby and upstairs. It hadn’t taken much persuasion to get his tux off and his hands under her dress, his mouth on her breasts. When they lay together after, tired and sticky and feeling strangely close, she’d shared her dreams, asked his and didn’t scoff.

Mrs. Gardner was his senior criminal justice teacher. She’d encouraged him to take the SAT, to apply to Stanford.

And Gregory Maguire. A nondescript student Sam had met and befriended, looking for an SAT study guide. He’d driven Sam to the bus station the night Sam had left for Stanford.

All people from his past. All people he’d liked and trusted. All people who’d encouraged him to follow his desires to California. All—

“Demons,” Lucifer says, the word no more than a whisper. He turns and they are looking into another mirror. “Sent to keep an eye on you, Sam. To make sure you did right. That you followed the path you were meant to. That you—“

“Disobeyed,” Sam says. 

An elegant shrug that looks strange on Sam’s frame. “Yes. But what’s done is done, Sam. Now. My gift to you. A little revenge. On those you trusted, who you thought cared but were only there to ensure your path.” Lucifer turns back to the room. The lights are brighter now and Sam can make out the glassy eyed looks on the frozen faces. He’s seen demons in terror before, when they didn’t know what was coming for them. This is a new level. “Are you ready, Sam?”

“But…” Sam blinks. “They’re yours.”   
  
Lucifer hums. “They’re demons, Sam. Inside human shells. And those human souls are in there with them. Set them free, Sam. They’ve been locked away for so long.”

Sam thinks of Meg, the girl she kept locked away. Thinks of himself when Meg took his body, coiled tight in his own mind, aware, but not enough to stop anything around him. He thinks of years spent that way. Decades of isolation, watching your life pass by and unable to live it. He thinks of Mr. Calhoun’s wife, dead in an unsolved murder, thinks of Mindy’s parents killed in that tragic car wreck, of Gregory’s father and the shotgun he’d taken to the head. He thinks of Dean dying at his hands, with Sam’s name on his lips and Sam unable to wrest back control.

“Finish it,” Sam murmurs, voice raw.

“You had only to ask, Sam,” Lucifer says.

The world goes black, then red. Lucifer uses his hands, Sam’s hands. Sam can feel the tear of flesh, the warm blood, the smooth, slippery weight of viscera between his fingers. There is something primal in this, but Lucifer is never manic. It is, Sam realizes, control and release all at once. A revenge twice over, for Sam’s hurts—though those hurts were ultimately committed with this very end in mind—and for Lucifer’s, cast down with those things he hated even more than he hated humans. And though Sam gave the okay, this is something, he knows, Lucifer would have done anyway.

Warm blood hits his face and Sam turns away as best he can. Does his best not to think of Dean or Bobby, Cas or Gabriel, even as he tries to find that spark, that light, that sliver of grace that Gabriel left inside him. But all he finds is darkness and he closes his eyes as it creeps over him. 

 

**~*~*~*~**

 

The mood in Bobby’s living room is funeral somber. Silent, but for the tick of an analog clock on the bookshelf, the occasional, listless turn of a page in a book. Bobby’s not reading; he needs something to do with his hands, Gabriel knows, and reaching for the whiskey would be too easy, would upset the already delicate balance of the nausea Bobby’s been riding since they hit the interstate, running from Detroit.

Cas sits in the living room corner, face closed off, thinking of his current humanity and watching Dean—who’s sitting on the floor, fixing something from one of Bobby’s junked cars—and…thinking that being human might not be so bad. If he gets to stay with Dean.

Interesting.

Gabriel sighs, closes his eyes again, setting deeper into his meditative healing. If he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t need much more—the reserves he’d wiped out during his grace exchange with Sam have been replenished—but it’s easier than watching the long faces in the room, easier than waiting. Gabriel’s never been patient. That was always a sore point between him and Dad.

The jingle of a cell phone breaks the mournful quiet. Dean answers.

Gabriel twitches at the voice on the phone, opens his eyes and stares.

“It’s Chuck,” Dean says to the room. “Stull Cemetery?”

Gabriel sits up. It couldn’t possibly… _Mom?_ He reaches out along the connection that buzzes in the back of his mind.

_Oh, he’s stubborn. It was the best I could do. Him and His “I don’t interfere” approach. He’s been watching too much Star Trek._

To be fair, Gabriel can somewhat understand the non-interference bit, between the disaster that was the Garden Experiment and then the Jesus Saga. Try to bring humanity together, only for the message to get muddled through the religious version of a game of Telephone. Dad had left not long after that. Or so Gabriel had heard; he’d been gone for years at that point.

_Yes_ , Isis murmurs, _spectacular failures, all. I wasn’t about to let Him have another one. It’s not perfect. But this is a chance. Lucifer and Michael will meet, three days from now,_ She says _. At Stull Cemetery. You need to separate them. They need to be kept apart._

_I always was good at getting in the way,_ Gabriel says.

_Just don’t get in the way of their swords this time._

_Phrasing!_

He can feel the look She’s giving him over the link before it goes warm and quiet.

Dean hangs up the phone. “Got a time and a place for the end of the world,” he says. “Stull Cemetery. 3 p.m. Friday.”

“That’s not a lot of time to prepare,” Cas says.

“Prepare for what?” Bobby straightens at his desk. “This is the Battle of the Titans. Not much to prepare for other than getting stepped on like bugs.”

“Then we’ll get ready to get stepped on,” Dean says. “You coming?” This, to Gabriel.

“Ringside seats to the Apocalypse Showdown? Wouldn’t miss it.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stull Cemetery. Lucifer realizes you can't go home again. Michael gets a talking to. Gabriel gets prepared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agh! One more chapter and an epilogue to go. (The last chapter pretty much ends the story. The epilogue is essentially the beginning of the next volume, though that may or may not get written or written any time soon.)
> 
> As always, kudos give me breath. Comments, life.

* * *

_Can you burn down the house, friend_  
You built with your own hands?  
“Songs in the Night,” Samantha Crain

* * *

 

 

Stull Cemetery, in the spring, is a barren place. The grasses are brown, blowing in the cool breeze, rattling like brittle bones. The old stone and wooden grave markers sprout across the lawn like mushrooms, moldering to dust in the Kansas elements.

Sam can hear the faint sound of traffic from a nearby highway, smell the charcoal scent of a grill burning, burgers cooking. Normal, everyday sounds and smells. It seems strange that they should still exist. It’s only been a handful of days, Lucifer has said, since he took Sam, but it feels like years.

Lucifer keeps speaking to him, trying to cajole him into conversation, smooth the memory of slaughter at their conjoined hands. But Sam has drawn into the back of his minds-pace, listening, watching, but not speaking. Not even when Lucifer does something that makes him feel warm and sleepy, like a gentle hand flowing over his head and down his back. A stroke for a favorite pet.

He keeps his silence until the moment Lucifer flies them to Stull Cemetery.

“The gateway to Hell,” Sam murmurs, remembering some piece of lore he’d read years ago. Legend said Lucifer himself had used the abandoned church in the cemetery as a portal between Hell and Earth. Obviously nonsense, given the Cage situation, but the rest of the lore around Stull read like a paranormal buffet: rain not falling on the inside of the unroofed church, strange electrical storms in the area, tombstones split down the middle, mysterious fires burning and smoking through the soil in the four corners of the cemetery. It seemed the perfect place for a Devil’s Gate.

“No, Sam,” Lucifer says. “No Devil’s Gate. No portal to Hell. No demons. Nothing but imaginative storytellers and home-grown bored teenagers looking to…raise a little hell.” Lucifer chuckles. “But the location did seem poetic given the lore and it is close to where this all began, Sam. With your birth.”

Lucifer comes to stand in an area that’s clear of markers, at the top of a gentle slope. They’re the only ones here, Sam thinks, and then his mind is overwhelmed by the presence of another angel. He even feels Lucifer take a short, sharp breath.

Michael stands in front of them, wrapped in the body of Sam’s other brother, his eyes fever bright, his face strangely lit, as if the sun is shining from inside his skin, and his mouth pulled into a grim smile.

For just a moment, Sam is so grateful that Michael had taken Adam instead of Dean. Then he grits his teeth against the shame.

“Brother,” Lucifer says, so much feeling in that single word that it almost takes Sam’s breath away. “It’s good to see you.”

“You as well. It’s been too long.” The skin around Adam’s eyes softens for a moment before he looks away. “It’s finally here. Are you ready?”

“No,” Lucifer says. “I’m not. Michael, why do we have to do this?”

“You know why. Because of what you did.”  
  
“What I did?” Lucifer’s voice is a whispered shout. “What if it’s not my fault?”

“Which means what?” Michael says.

“Think about it. Dad—He made everything. He made us. Which means He made me who I am. He _wanted_ the Devil.”

“So?” Michael holds himself rigid, arms at his side.

“So? So— _why_? And why make us fight? I don’t get the point.”

“And what’s your point, little brother?”

“My point?” Sam feels a fine tremor run through Lucifer. “We’re going to _kill_ each other. And for _what_? Another one of Dad’s tests? His little experiments? His need to wind things up and watch them go? We’re brothers. Let’s not do this. Let’s walk away. Off the chessboard.”

Michael stares at them for a moment. Sam holds his breath, or whatever the mental equivalent of his breath would be.

Then Michael shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I-I can’t do that. I’m a good son. And I have my orders.”

“But you _don’t_ have to follow them.” Sam wonders if Michael can taste the desperation in the plea, Lucifer’s need for his brother to choose and choose _him_.

Michael scoffs softly. “Do you think I’ll rebel? I’m not like you. And you haven’t changed. Always needing to be at the center of everything. Always blaming everyone else. We were _happy_ , Lucifer. We were together. But then you betrayed us. You betrayed me. You never learned. Time and again. After the Cage, after the Garden. And it made Dad leave.”

“No one makes Him do anything. He’s doing this to us.”

Michael shakes his head, looks them in the eyes. “You’re a monster, Lucifer. And I have to kill you.”

Sam feels something let go inside Lucifer, then. People always talk of breaking points like a rubber band snapping. But this is more like a rubber band pulled to its limits suddenly disintegrating. The tension that was building vanishes, leaving behind a sudden, unexpected void that makes Sam shiver.

Michael has made his choice.

Lucifer raises his chin. “If that’s how it must be, brother…I’d like to see you try.”

That’s when Sam hears it. “Rock of Ages,” blaring from a sound system he’d recognize in his sleep, bass tuned just so. And then, the sleek black of the Impala pulls into the clearing and both Lucifer and Michael turn to watch Dean get out of the car, all familiar swagger and bravado.

“Howdy boys. Sorry. Am I interrupting something?” Dean looks at Lucifer, but Sam can see that his eyes aren’t meant for the angel. “Hey. We need to talk.”

“Dean,” Lucifer says. “Even for you, this is monumentally stupid. Do you really want to put your brother through this?”

“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to Sam.”

“You are no longer the vessel, Dean.” Michael says. “You have no right to be here.”

“Bullshit. My brothers are here. And Adam, if you’re in there somewhere, I am _so_ sorry.”

Michael’s face twists. “Adam isn’t home right now.” Sam marvels at the ugliness of the scowl.

“Well,” Dean says, “You’re next on my list, buttercup. But right now, I need five minutes with Luci.”

Sam can feel the anger off Michael like a blast of hot summer air.

“You little maggot. You are no longer part of this story.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Dean says, just as another voice yells “Hey, ass butt!”

Sam’s head jerks toward Cas. And he’s surprised to find the head on his body follows suit. Just in time to watch Cas lob a Molotov at Michael. The flames envelope the archangel as though he’s no more than dry kindling and he vanishes in a wash of oily smoke and a preternatural flare of light.

From there, everything moves almost too fast for Sam to keep up. He sees Cas explode into pieces, Bobby crumple to the ground like a broken doll at the flick of a wrist.

And then there’s Dean, under his hands, the soft flesh of Dean’s cheek splitting open under his knuckles, Dean’s teeth loosening beneath Sam’s fist, Dean’s blood warm on his fingers, his face. Then Dean’s hand tangles in his jacket and his broken and swollen face comes close, breath hot against Sam’s. “It’s okay, Sammy. It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here and I’m not gonna leave you.”

And Sam feels a hitch in Lucifer’s movement as he punches Dean again. Feels something coiled inside himself begin to burn.

**~*~*~*~**

 

Miles outside Stull Cemetery, in the town of Lawrence, on the edge of a little park, Gabriel stands in a copse of trees, waiting. The pagan persona he’s been wearing for centuries is wrapped tightly around him like a cloak, keeping him off heaven’s radar. Though the snare that’s set with a combination of his power and Hers will soon be drawing a piece of Heaven toward him.

He snorts at that thought. _Phrasing_.

The park around him is hushed, as if the world and all its creatures are holding their collective breath, in this calm before the storm.

Then Gabriel feels Cas disappear, his brother’s presence blown out like the flame of a match. And there’s another presence hurtling toward him, a fiery meteor splitting through the sky.  

The quiet is broken by the sudden crackle and crash of wings falling through branches, accompanied by the odor of smoke and heavy oil. And then Michael is standing in front of him, blinking and dazed and wearing the body of the youngest Winchester brother. It doesn’t fit him well, Gabriel thinks. There are light and shadows in strange places, the angelic countenance trying to escape from the host body.

They stare at one another, Gabriel placid and poker faced and Michael with that constipated look that speaks of a combination of confusion and concern. Especially when he realizes he can’t fly.

“Gabriel,” he says at last. “You’re alive.”

That might, Gabriel thinks, be genuine affection in Michael’s voice. “Ease off the water works, bro.”

“I felt your passing,” Michael says. “It…left a hole.”

“Pothole sized?”

Michael tilts his head, blinking slowly, considering. Gabriel’s seen that gesture before, albeit on a face that was so entirely different from a human’s it was laughable. Still, it looks strange and too old for young Adam’s face.

“You left, Gabriel. Ran out on our Father. On us. But I never wanted to see you dead. How did you come back? Our Father?”

Gabriel shakes his head. He feels Her behind him then, watches Michael’s eyes widen as he sees Her.

“Mother,” Michael says, and the word is a reverent curse that only Michael could ever pull off.

“First born.” Isis steps forward, gauzy length of her black dress flowing around her like a shadow, her spine pulled long and straight, dark eyes flashing. “Still trying to wear your Father’s mantle?”

“Someone has to.”

“Yes. But not like this.”

“This is the way it must be.”

“No,” She says. “One of the things I most regret not instilling in you and your siblings the necessity of change. Not everything need go according to a specific plan.”

“And besides,” Gabriel adds, “you’ve already made changes to that plan. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure that’s not Dean Winchester you’re wearing.”

Michael sneers. “You always were a mama’s boy.”

“And you were a sycophantic little kiss-ass desperate for our Father’s approval. Never willing to step out of line. Never willing to stick your neck out. Not even for your own brothers.”

The animosity between them is electric, raising the hair on the back of Gabriel’s neck. Then Isis puts Her hand on his arm and pulls him back. He hadn’t even realized he’d stepped toward his brother.

“Michael,” She says, “go home. See to your siblings. See to the souls in your charge, languishing in their separate heavens when they should be able to mingle with one another or choose another life. Now is not the time. The world is not ending today.”

“And who are you to go against His plan?” Michael says, pulling his vessel to its full height. The light and shadow that spill out from his form contract and shudder.

Isis smiles, eyes flashing warm brown to black. Not the flat ombre of a demon; it’s the blackness of the universe, wide and endless and filled with stars. When She speaks, Her words carry a tremble of thunder.

“I am the one who made you. You may idolize your Father, but I am the balance in this world, the water to the flame and the earth to the air. My name was on the lips of humans before your Father’s or any of our children. They prayed and built temples to me and asked me to look after them. And I have.

“And even when your Father’s plan to bring everyone together under that fanciful story of the young sacrificed god failed so spectacularly, in the violence and the bloodshed, still they sought me out. For love, for safety.

“They call me the Great Mother and I will not leave them to the machinations of selfish children who wish to destroy them because they haven’t gotten everything they wanted.

“Now. Unless you want to share a cage with your brother, let that poor boy _go_. And _go home_.”

Michael closes his eyes, twitches. Those last words drop heavy as a planet, echoing in the depths of his grace. They make Gabriel’s teeth hurt and he’s not even the focal point.

Michael’s eyes are glassy when he opens them, his lips part, tremble and he wets them with his tongue, the gesture all too human, all too vulnerable. Daddy’s boy he may have been, but still, no one likes to disappoint mom.

Isis steps in front of him, lifts a hand to his cheek. “I love you,” She says. “Go home.”

And with an explosive rush of wind, Michael is gone and Adam Winchester lurches, slumps forward into Isis’s arms and She balances him with his head on Her shoulder.

When She turns to Gabriel, Her eyes once more a rich brown, fatigue obvious in the lines at their corners, and he realizes Michael didn’t quite go all on his own. But still….

“One down,” Gabriel says and stretches his senses in the direction of Stull.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's choices. Sam's strength. Gabriel's next step. (And then there's Adam...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is it. All we have left is the epilogue. It's half written. My goal is to get it finished by next weekend so I can have it edited in time for posting. 
> 
> For all of you who've left kudos and - especially - comments: _thank you_. This thing has truly been a labor of love. (It took me over five years to write it, in between working, grad school, and a cross country move.)

* * *

_I will be watching over you|_  
I am gonna help you see it through  
I will protect you in the night  
  
“Silent Lucidity,” Queensryche

* * *

 

_When the world reappears again, Bobby’s spare bedroom is gone and everything around Sam is white, empty, and endless. Gabriel stands in front of him, right hand slightly cupped and held out toward Sam, something glowing star bright in the cage of his fingers._

_“What is it?” Sam asks. His voice seems to echo in this place that Gabriel’s brought him; a place deep inside his own mind, his own soul._

_“Grace,” Gabriel says in that sonorous voice that Sam’s not sure he’ll ever get used to coming from a mouth that’s built for wisecracking. “Light. Love. The fabric of the universe. A catalyst.” Gabriel opens his fingers. The grace sits in his palm, shining like a star._

_Sam blinks, thinks, maybe, it should burn being this close to something so bright, so pure. “A catalyst?” He raises his fingers to hover over Gabriel’s palm. The grace pulses. Warm. Happy._

_“There will be a moment, Sam. I don’t know when. I don’t know what it will involve. I don’t know how long it will last. But there will be a moment, where his control will slip enough for you to take your body back. This will help you do that. And when it’s all said and done, it will help me bring you back, Sam.”_

_“Bring me back?”_

_Gabriel looks at Sam, surprised, even though he shouldn’t be. Sam has never even thought of being brought back. It never crossed his mind. Even here, in this place that would make other humans think of impossible things made possible, Sam Winchester is determinedly focused what he needs to do to make amends, to right the wrong steps he’s taken, to save the world._

_It makes Gabriel want to weep._

_“Hell’s a big place, Sam. A celestial compass isn’t unwarranted. And the Cage, well, it likes to hold on to whatever’s inside of it. And the easiest way to get you out of the Cage is to have a piece of you that’s yearning to be reconnected with its whole. Now,” Gabriel says, raising his hand, “swallow it.”_

_“What?”_

_“I know. Not exactly the context I thought I’d first say those words to you, either.”_

_Sam feels his face heat and he sputters._

_“We have to hide it deep, Sam. Tuck it away so he can’t sense it, as deep inside you as it can go. And if he does happen across it, hopefully it’ll be so buried he’ll think it’s just another piece of himself, a sign of his full possession.”_

_Gabriel raises his hand to Sam’s mouth and Sam takes a deep breath, presses his lips to Gabriel’s palm, scent of lightning and chocolate washing over his senses, and takes the star into himself._

And that’s it burning now, Sam thinks, as light glints off the old army man stuck in the Impala’s ashtray years ago. The one Dean took the blame for when Dad found it. He sees them now, two kids in the back seat, squabbling over who gets to ride shotgun, grown men fighting over music. Dean bursting into his apartment in Stanford, carrying him out of the fire for the second time in his life, even as Sam fought to run back in. Long nights camped out in bucket seats. The smell of engine oil and fast food. Dean bargaining for him, dying for him. Dean _choosing_ him.

Warmth floods his body and Sam can hear a voice, Gabriel’s voice, whispering to him. _You are strong. You are loved. You can kick my brother’s ass._

And Sam chooses.

He gasps, stutters forward as Dean slumps against the car. In the air, he can feel the electricity of a coming storm, feel the wind on his face, the blood sticky on his hands, the pain of the split knuckles, the fluttering presence of the archangel beating inside his mind.

“I’ve got him, Dean. I’ve got him.” Sam stumbles back, watches Dean’s bloodied and broken face looking up at him, eyes wide and in pain and still…still not wanting Sam to go.

He feels Lucifer inside him, the hot bile of pure panic, not Sam’s own, rising in his throat. He almost feels sorry for what he has to do. He’s not even sure the Devil deserves to be locked away in some black place for eons.

But, at least this time, he’ll have company.

Sam grasps the key in his jacket pocket, throws it to the earth and watches the ground split open with a roar and a rush of wind.

“Sammy,” Dean says, barely a whisper.

Sam looks over his shoulder one last time. “It’s okay, Dean. I got him.”

Then he turns around and jumps.

**~*~*~*~*~**

All’s quiet in Stull when Gabriel arrives. The air is heavy and still and even the early evening birds are silent. The Impala hulks on the hillside, settled low on its tires, keeping watch on two brothers. One lays face down on the ground, unmoving. The other kneels beside him, head bowed, face bloody and twisted in grief.

Dean looks up as Gabriel draws near, Isis at his elbow. She gently lays a deeply asleep Adam in the grass.

A rush of wind whips around them, a change in the air pressure making Dean wince while even Gabriel shakes his head as his ears pop. Then Castiel and Bobby stand before them, whole and unmarred.

Dean’s eyes widen.

“About time, you old Mesopotamian goat,” Isis mutters.

“Bobby. Cas.” Dean’s voice is roughened from the fingers that have gripped his throat, thickened with blood and sorrow. Cas frowns, lays two fingers against Dean’s temple and the wounds vanish as if they never were.

Gabriel grins. Looks like his little brother got his groove back.

Dean looks at Cas with something like awe for a moment, then finds Gabriel, looks back to Sam’s body, prostrate on the ground. “He’s gone.”

“Yes.”

“It was for nothing.”

“No. It was a sacrifice. It was always going to be a sacrifice, Dean. That’s the whole theme. But the plan means it doesn’t have to be a permanent one.” He kneels next to Dean, next to Sam’s body, puts his hands on Sam’s forehead and watches the silvery blue light form around him like a neon outline before settling.

“What’d you do?” Dean barks.

“Preservation. He wouldn’t exactly stay fresh,” Gabriel says and stands. He stretches, pops his shoulders, the sound like muffled gunfire in the quiet.

“Gabriel.” Isis moves toward him, cups his face in Her hands. “Here.” She presses Her forehead to his so all he can see is dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes and all he can smell is the storm-sweet scent of Her, and all he can feel is the electrical tendrils of Her power as She pours into him. Then there’s another power, warmer and bright and familiar accompanying Her own. And that—

“Yes. It’s from your Father,” She says as She places a kiss on his brow and steps back.

Gabriel gasps for air as if he’s been drowning. His spine pulls tight and he feels the stretch of his wings, opens his eyes and watches them rise and arc, electric gold shot through with bolts of midnight blue, highlights of silver, and stronger than they’ve felt in a long time.

“Your eyes,” Dean says, “they’re gold.” And Gabriel’s half-forgotten there were humans among them; thankfully, Cas hasn’t and has both Dean and Bobby wrapped in the interdimensional shadow of his own wings, protecting them from the burning brightness that Gabriel’s giving off.

He takes another breath and pulls all that power back into himself, feels his skin fairly vibrate with it. Then he looks at Dean and snaps his fingers.

“What the hell?” Dean says, eyes crossing as the image of a house, its address prominent in his mind, pops into his head, along with the picture of a small, yapping Jack Russell.

“That’s Fox,” Gabriel says. “You’re a dog person. Pick him up for me. And treat him well while I’m gone.” And with that, Gabriel takes to the air, never one for long goodbyes.

**~*~*~*~*~**

Dean shakes his head. He’s still muzzy. He looks at Sam’s body, then looks at Cas, at the woman who’d come with Gabriel. “Where’s he going?”

“To find Sam, of course” She says. She lifts Adam in Her arms once more, looks at the two brothers, then Bobby and Cas and smiles.

The world tilts on its axis and suddenly they’re in Bobby’s living room. Bobby stumbles into his desk chair, looking vaguely sick. Dean, still kneeling, makes sure Sam’s body has followed them on the sudden trip, then looks up at the woman. “Who are you?”

“My Mother,” Cas says, simply, as if those two words explain everything.

She winks. “You can call me Isis.”

Bobby coughs, raises an eyebrow.

Dean’s frown deepens as everything he’s known falls apart once more. Then he shakes his head, rolls with it. “Okay.” His eyes stray to Cas, hovering at the edge of the room. “You know, for a moment there, when you came back, healed me…I thought you might be God.”

Cas smiles and it’s beatific. “That’s a nice sentiment.”

“He does favor his Father,” Isis says, placing Adam gently on Bobby’s couch. “But Cas is more level headed and hands-on than Chuck ever was.”

“ _Chuck_?”

Isis smiles, meets Dean’s eyes. He thinks She might be laughing at him.

“Don’t think too hard about it. But, you know that line? ‘Created in His image?’ I always hated the imbalance of it. I was there too, thank you. But, it’s not entirely wrong. You’ve learned the truth. We celestial beings and humans are very much alike. We are imperfect and fallible. We’re just much longer lived. And when we screw up, like any parent, our children suffer for it. In tremendous ways. I hope to do better,” She says softly. “This is a fresh start.”

She gestures at Sam’s body. “You should put him in a bed, Dean. Keep him safe until Gabriel returns. This one,” She gestures to Adam, “will likely sleep for another day. Make sure you have food on hand. He’ll wake up ravenous. I’ll be back to check in on them,” She finishes and vanishes in a waft of sweet scented air.

“I really,” Dean says, “want to learn how you guys do that.”

Cas shrugs. “It requires wings.”

The silence that fills the room is heavy, broken only by the soft sounds of Adam’s deep sleep breathing. The three of them stare at each other, at loose ends. Dean and Bobby have seen the end of many hunts, but what exactly do you do when you’ve seen the end of the coming apocalypse?

“Beer?” Bobby asks.

Dean nods.

“I can put Sam in the room he was using,” Cas says. “Until… Until.”

“I—yeah.” Dean stirs, stands and then reaches down to slide his hands beneath Sam’s armpits. “Get his feet, Cas?”  

“Yes.”

Together, angel and human, they carry Sam upstairs and into the bedroom, lay him carefully on top of the neatly made bed.

Cas leaves Dean alone then, going back downstairs to check on Adam, to see if Bobby needs help.

Dean watches the sunset through the window. He didn’t expect to see this one. Didn’t expect the world to be around for the sun _to_ set. He remembers his last final sunset: remembers the burning agony of the hellhound ripping its way through his chest, remembers the heat of Hell, the smell of blood and burning flesh. But mostly, he remembers the darkness.

He watches the sunlight shrink, receding over Sam’s body until it lights up only his face and finally leaves that in shadow.

Dean pulls the afghan at the foot of the bed up to Sam’s chest, tucks it around him. Then he turns away, flicking the bedside lamps on as he goes, leaving Sam’s body in a pool of light.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of things, and the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! I'm off schedule due to finishing up my move. But this is it. The epilogue. I'm not entirely I'm satisfied with it, but oh well. Endings are impossible.
> 
> It's over. Except, perhaps, for short fics I decide to add as inspiration strikes. 
> 
> Though right now, most of my inspiration is striking for the Star Wars fandom (so if you happened to be interested in some prequel slash, check out my [Another Space and Time](https://archiveofourown.org/series/793845) collection). 
> 
> As always: Kudos sustain me. Comments give me life.

* * *

_You’re the fire and the flood_  
_And I’ll always feel you in my blood_

\- Vance Joy, “Fire and Flood”

* * *

  

Sometimes he remembers that he was real.

A person. Someone who tasted food. Who felt rain on his skin. Who spent nights with people who cared for him by his side.

Then it’s all washed away when the shadow falls. When the Darkness comes.

He ceases to exist in any capacity but his own mind. And even then, he’s not sure; perhaps he’s a figment of someone’s imagination.

“It’s the Cage,” a voice tells him. It’s strange among the shadows. It has too much Light. That’s how he comes to think of it. Light. “It takes everything you are, everything you were, and scatters it. …I imagine it’s far worse for a mortal soul,” the Light tells him.

Sometimes he thinks the Light grows hands. Hands that reach for him. He feels them pluck at the frayed spaces where muscle and nerve used to be. Where only shadow is now. Feels them try to pull the shadows out. Or push them in?

That was common, when he first came to this place. But the Light has withdrawn lately. The hands have withdrawn. Leaving him alone in the dark.

Sometimes, he hears the Light murmuring. Other times, he hears it sob.

If there were days in this place, he would call this day-in, day-out. The same hope devouring Darkness.

Eventually, he starts to welcome it. The not remembering. Because when he does remember, the images burn through him like lightning. If he had bones, they would be ash.

One day or night, he’s just come from beneath that white fire, when he, from out of nowhere, remembers a voice. Not the one that comes to him in the Darkness. One from before. Ageless. Echoing to the depths of his soul.

He hears it, ringing through his head.

Then he _hears_ it. Saying his name in a language he thinks he shouldn’t recognize, musical and fluid and strange. The flow of deep sea currents, the song of stars.

Darkness recedes, just enough for him to see the shape and form of the Light that’s been with him this whole time, pale and wan like a worn strip of gauze, with luminous and dark shifting currents for eyes, a string of stars for a mouth. The Light blinks at him then turns toward the Darkness at the edge of the Cage.

Shadows split apart, ripped open by a shining blade of silver starlight and another form appears before him. Slightly smaller than the Light, but brighter, a thousand meteors burning up over a midnight desert, with eyes that are a sea-swell of blue phosphor and a mouth that is a slash of burning sunlight. _Bright_.

The Bright reaches hands toward him. Hands that curl around him, lift him, cradle him – and he remembers these concepts, though he has no body to cradle –in light, in warmth.

There is screaming. The Light lets out a shriek so loud and so unlike anything he’s ever heard. It brings with it the memory of grief, of desolation. And if he could cry, he would. Instead he presses closer to the warmth of the Bright, feeling as if he could become a part of it. As if he _should_ become a part of it. There’s an ache deep inside him. A longing to be whole.

The Bright makes soothing hums. The shrieking slows, fades into a cry that is half wail, half moan. The Bright murmurs something else in the language of currents and stars. He thinks it may be a benediction. The Light cries something in return. He misses it as the Darkness lurches forward. He turns away and loses himself in the Bright.

 

 

Noon. South Dakota. The Singer Salvage Yard is quiet but for the sound of metal meeting metal, as Dean tinkers with the engine of the Impala. Cas lingers at his elbow, passing him tools when he asks for them. Occasionally, Dean glances up, looks into the distance at the figure of Adam moving among the rusted out husks of cars, as he’s taken to doing every day about this time. He hasn’t spoken since he woke up three days ago. Dean wonders if there’s something broken inside him.

From the porch, Gabriel’s dog, Fox, rests his head on his paws, watches the world disinterestedly. 

Through the open window of the house, the sounds of the news switches over to a ball game and the familiar, soothing tones of the announcers. The wind stirs, spring scented and warm with the promise of summer.

The quiet day is broken by a sound like a muffled sonic boom mixed with the haunting freight train noise of a tornado, followed by the shatter and tinkle of glass onto the shingles as the upstairs, guest room window explodes.

 

 

He knows nothing. Until he knows everything at once. The world explodes around him a shower of sound before growing silent and blooming with other sensations: soft cloth under his fingers, rough cotton wrapped around his body, a breeze making the fine hairs along his arms stand up. He takes a great lungful of air. He remembers his name.

“ _Sammy_?”

“De—“ Sam tries to speak, but the breath catches in his throat, nearly chokes him. He feels hands on him, someone familiar, who smells like chocolate and thunderstorms. Whose presence next to him is warm, bright. Gabriel.

“Don’t try to speak, kiddo.”

Sam opens his eyes. For a moment, it’s like staring into the sun. Figures swim in his vision. He catches a flash of molten gold and the curve of a mouth, nearly unfamiliar without its usual smirk. A shadow moves toward him, the face wavering like a reflection in water, but he recognizes the green eyes, the stern set to the mouth that Dean got whenever he was trying to hold it together.

“S’okay Sammy. We’ll talk later.”

“Sleep,” Gabriel says. Warm fingers brush over Sam’s forehead. “ _Sleep_.”

It’s been so long since he slept, he’s not sure he remembers what sleep is.

He closes his eyes and knows nothing more.

 

 

“He okay?” Dean asks.

“Were you?” Gabriel says, sinking down on the bed next to Sam. Gabriel arranges the pillow so he’s propped against the headboard, frowns at the lack of support and snaps his fingers, conjuring up several more pillows and a couple of soft blankets that he drapes over himself and Sam. He leans back against them with a sigh, Sam a line of warmth along his side.

“So,” Dean says, brow furrowed, as he watches Gabriel get comfortable. “Now, what?”

Gabriel shrugs. “He’ll sleep for a while. Couldn’t say how long. The Cage is draining. To put it mildly. And it wasn’t meant for mortal souls. No real telling what kind of fallout we’re gonna have on our hands.”

Dean looks surprised. “You’re staying?”

It’s not an entirely unfair question. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m staying.” He must be too tired for sarcasm. “Besides, someone’s gotta watch out for this one. You already have your own guardian angel, who’s staying close. Very close,” he finishes, looking at Cas standing behind Dean, close enough that he’s either not been made familiar with the human concept of personal space or – more likely, Gabriel thinks – deems it unnecessary when it comes to Dean Winchester.

“Yeah. Well…” Dean looks at Sam, his expression part parent, all big brother.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Gabriel says. “Except be there when he wakes up. Which won’t be for a while. So, why don’t you get back to showing Cas your different tools and how to do a lube job—“

Dean sputters.

Cas shakes his head and, _ah_ , his baby brother _has_ been learning more and more about humans just in the last few days. He actually got that implication.

“—and I’ll stay right here. I’ll be here when Sam wakes up.” Gabriel smirks as Cas grabs Dean by the elbow and pulls him from the room.

Bobby, lingering in the doorway, looks him over appraisingly. “Need anything?”

Gabriel glances at Sam. “Water. Crackers. Being dead’s hell on the digestive system.”

After Bobby leaves, Gabriel shifts, slides further down the bed, until his head’s propped on the pillow. He leans close to Sam, draping one arm over his torso, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath, the thump of his heartbeat, and the beguiling thrum of his own grace deep inside, entangled so intricately with Sam’s soul that there will be no removing it.

Not without causing Sam’s death.

It calls to Gabriel, makes him want to be close, to seek out the missing part of himself.  

He wasn’t expecting this.

He wonders how Sam will be affected when he wakes.

But that and the fallout from the Cage is a worry for later.

He closes his eyes and lets the weariness wash over him, lets himself sink into this moment of respite. The warm breeze coming in from the window he’d broken on landing. The plushness of the pillows, the softness of the blankets against his skin. Sam’s breath and warmth and heartbeat. His grace and the piece that’s inside Sam humming in synchronicity.

Then Sam’s hand reaches for him, even in unconsciousness, curling around his forearm and pulling him until they are fitted so close together, Gabriel’s not sure where he ends and Sam begins. Gabriel releases a shuddering breath, leans his head against Sam’s and lets himself fall into the dark, surrounded by the bright phosphor of Sam’s dreaming mind.

It feels like home.

 

 

 


End file.
